Good News for Old and Young Alike – Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family

On this first Sunday after Christmas, the Liturgy invites us to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family.

And today the gospel presents the Holy Family’s encounter with two elderly people of faith, Simeon and Anna.

In the first and second readings, too, we hear about two more elderly people of faith, Abraham and Sarah.

Today there is Good News for both the old and the young.

Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to Jerusalem to be presented to the Lord, and one at a time, Simeon and Anna each come forward, one after another, and speak to them of the child Jesus.

We might imagine this being similar to a young couple here at St. Peter’s bringing their child to be baptized after Mass, and being approached by some of the older parishioners who remember when Mary was pregnant.

But the gospel situation is quite different.

In the first place, Mary and Joseph have traveled with Jesus to Jerusalem; they’re not in their own town of Nazareth. Simeon and Anna aren’t neighbors or family acquaintances who happen to know them or have seen them before. They’re total strangers.

And second, Simeon and Anna are acting on the prompting of the Holy Spirit to proclaim to all that this child is the messiah for whom they have been waiting. Full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit, Simeon and Anna come forward to bear witness to the messiah.

Together, they help us recognize how precious and important it is to have the elderly in our family of believers.

Unfortunately, in our time and in our culture, the elderly are often seen as a burden rather than as deep wells of wisdom and faith. The prevailing message of our culture is that people are to be valued only for what they can do, not for who they are.

In this kind of environment, it’s no surprise that the elderly get ignored, and their words brushed aside.

Yet when Mary and Joseph are approached by Simeon, they are amazed at what he says to them. They accept his blessing. They listen to what he has to say and honor it.

And Anna, who never left the temple, but worshiped day and night with fasting and prayer, she bears witness to the goodness of God and to the child who had come to redeem the world. At eighty-four years old and a widow, she surely had experienced her share of heartache and loss, of struggle and pain. And yet, she remained faithful to the covenant. She still believed in the redeemer promised by God.

Anna and Simeon echo the faith of Abraham and Sarah we hear about in today’s first reading. Abraham and Sarah are our great-great-great-grandparents in the faith. They put their faith in the Lord and then waited patiently. They believed that even in their old age, God would give them the descendants he had promised, just as Anna and Simeon believed they would see the messiah, the fulfillment of God’s covenant.

There are Simeon’s and Anna’s, Abraham’s and Sarah’s in our own families, in our faith community, older men and women who are “righteous and devout” and who trust in the Holy Spirit; that is, people who have an intimate relationship with God even after having lived through extremely difficult circumstances. There are those here among us who have lived through the Great Depression, through a World War, to say nothing of their own personal tragedies.

And yet they remain faithful, praying each day for their children and grandchildren, drawing nearer to God with each breath they take. You can see it in their smiles, in the way they eagerly talk about their faith, in the wisdom of their words.

Here they come week after week—in many cases, day after day—to participate in Mass. They have learned the hard lessons of life and have seen God at work over the years.

Their age gives them perspective and the ability to see through the illusions of wealth, honor, and pride.

They have become wise. They have remained faithful.

How often do the elderly of this world speak words of wisdom and faith only to be ignored. And yet, they of all people carry wisdom within them, the wisdom of long-suffering experience and the wisdom of remaining faithful followers of Jesus despite all of life’s trials and disappointments.

The elderly have a vital role to play in our lives and the lives of our children, and they played an important role in Jesus’ life, too.

The full name of today’s feast is The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

And when we think of the Holy Family, chances are we picture baby Jesus with Mary and Joseph in the Nativity scene, or imagine Jesus growing up in a quiet house with his mother and step-father, just the three of them. But they most likely didn’t raise Jesus by themselves.

If Jesus grew up in a typical Nazareth household, he probably lived with his extended family nearby, maybe even in the same house.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins—Jesus would most likely have been around his relatives daily. There would have been many wise and faithful elders to offer Mary and Joseph help in raising Jesus.

The gospel tells us that in Nazareth Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom.” We can imagine him sitting on his grandmother’s lap, or helping his grandfather with chores, listening to their wisdom and observing how they drew strength from God.

Abraham and Sarah, Simeon and Anna, today the liturgy reminds us what a gift it is to have faithful elderly in our midst.

The challenge of the Good News today is twofold:

First, to the elderly, God says, “Fear not! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great.” In other words, remain faithful, hopeful. Follow the example of Abraham and Sarah and trust in the promises of God; be like Anna and Simeon and tell the world about how your eyes have seen the salvation of the world.

And for the rest of us, we look to the example of Mary and Joseph who listened to Simeon and Anna, who did not brush them aside or ignore them. Our challenge is to recognize God’s presence in the wisdom and faith of our elderly and to treat them as the sacred gifts they are. To speak with them and listen to them, to include them in our activities, to visit them regularly, to remember them in our prayers, to see them.

On this feast of the Holy Family we remember and bless all of the elderly in our families and our community who have handed on the faith to us. Their faithfulness to the Messiah gives us the strength and wisdom we need to be faithful followers of Jesus.

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