First reading: Genesis 1:26-28,31
Psalm: Ps 128:1-5
Epistle: Ephesians 6:1-9
Gospel: Luke 2:42-52
Not finding Him, they returned to Jerusalem in search of Him.
Break downs:
It’s been a interesting couple of weeks in the Konicki household. Someone damaged my car in the parking lot at work. Our refrigerator and freezer went. The roof on the house is going. Everyone is antsy over the economy and jobs. Between the children’s school and sports schedules there isn’t an extra moment. The cleaning, the laundry, the odds and ends, the bills… and I don’t mean the football kind. The pressure is building and in the midst of all that we reach the point of breakdown.
We’ve all been there at one time or another. My wife and I were watching the new ABC show The Middle. In the last episode the mom was showing off her skills as the family’s emotional support amidst just that kind of stress – until kaboom and she just couldn’t do it anymore. Breakdown.
The pressure and the stress of life rarely lead to a romantic night together, quiet, or peace. Stress doesn’t seem to enhance family closeness. Conversations become arguments. People push apart and we feel we are at the point of breaking.
Get lost:
When we get to the point of breaking we rarely seek the peaceful path. Of course it all doesn’t happen at once. The stresses build and lead to anger, anger to resentment, resentment to bitterness. Fights become an end unto themselves — after all it’s about the points.
Over time, the breakdown leads to the most famous statement in American English — get lost. We want to be apart, alone, to be conversant with ourselves in the midst of misery. Get lost, get out of my life. There’s got to be someone, some place better than this. The decision to be separate is a decision for the anti-family. Family is seen as excess baggage.
The separation:
Hence the separation. The family breaks down into little pockets, winners, losers, the strong, the weak. I’m using family as an example, but it happens in friendships, among colleagues, in the Parish. We can’t seem to take it. We can’t deal. Separation and the new frontier seems to be our only way out. We enter a world of self. The quest for self-fulfillment overrides our need for family, for relationship. After-all, if I love myself the most who can compete?
Alone:
I hear the chorus of angels singing — finally alone. We’ve escaped the confines and the stresses of that woman, that man, those kids, my jerky co-workers, the bingo workers, the spaghetti dinner puters-oners, the rummage sale folks. I’m ready for my new frontier……..
And the crickets chirp, and we’re alone, and the grass — the same brown spots reappear, not so green on this side of the mountain.
When my older daughter was little I used to read her The Cow Who Went Over the Mountain. The cow gathered her friends and took them to the other side of the mountain, all under the promise of what would be. For the cow the grass would be munchier, for the frog the bugs would be crunchier, for the ducks the water would be splashier, and for the pig the mud would be sloshier.
We know the moral here. It wasn’t to be. Just disappointment, and a longing for home.
Reconnecting:
Mary and Joseph had a plan. Jesus was surely among their friends and relatives. But they didn’t leave it at that, they looked for Him — and didn’t find Him.
How like us, how like the world. We inherently know He is out there and that the right relationships are out there; out there somewhere and we look. We search for Him and for our relationships in many ways — until we can’t find Him, until we find we are alone. Then what?
If we follow the choice of Mary and Joseph we choose our obligation, our commitment, what is right and proper and we move to reconnect. If we follow the path we think is easiest, maybe we head for the greener pastures; leaving Jesus, our families, those around us, and search for what we think is the better life — a life defined my the world’s standard of self. Do we choose the way of life or the way out?
The choice to reconnect, to rebuild, to take the occasionally harder choice is what this Sunday is about.
Where we are:
We are in a place that is very human. The sinful choice, the wide and easy paths are always available, usually marked with flashing neon signs that say shop here, gamble here, run away, leave the losers behind. That’s the road to the Vegas of our dreams where what we do and say is our own business, ours alone. What happens in that world stays in that world. The other path is the path Jesus points to, the one of relationship and family. It can be hard at times and is covered with the bumps of disappointment, hard work, leaking roofs, dented cars, defrosted freezers. It’s the spouse we bicker with but love dearly. The children who tax our taxes and our patience. The co-workers and parishioners who demand so much, who need so much. We are in a very human and frail place, but we have a way to get us through.
Where we will be:
I alluded to the show The Middle. After mom had her breakdown she discovered something wonderful. The rest of the family, each and every one, led by the father, were her source of reassurance. When Mary and Joseph found Jesus they found their source of assurance. These are not two different and separate assurances, two different things but the same. The assurance and the connections we seek must include God and each other.
Our human family is in search of connection, of relationship and the Holy Church shows us that the ideal model is found in the lifelong commitment of family, beginning in Holy Matrimony and lived in accord with the laws of God and His Holy Church. The family then extends beyond that at home to the family of neighbor-to-neighbor, co-worker to co-worker, citizen to citizen, all of us in God’s Holy Polish National Catholic Church. Those relationships, the family at home and the wider family of Christ are what we celebrate today. Each of these relationships and connections has God in its midst. Each of the relationships and every family that includes Jesus as its center destroys selfishness and opens the door to real joy. Jesus lives in each and His hand blesses each. His grace sustains us in our families, in our relationships.
The connection that include the Lord see us through every difficulty, every problem. Do problems occur, do things happen that damage relationships? Certainly! but we are reminded today, this day amidst all its problems and conflicts, breakdowns, apartness, separation, and aloneness that God is part of our family, part of our relationships, central to our life.
We have choices, we have many paths. We can choose to wallow in our secret desires and choose to live apart, alone, always in search of the greener pasture, or we can choose the way God has shown us, the way that destroys conflict, breakdown, apartness, separation, and aloneness. Finding Jesus, finding each other even in the midst of every stress, shows us a glimpse of the joy we will find, reconnected, in the family of humanity in God’s Kingdom.
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
Amen.
