HOLY FAMILY 2007 9am

One mother says that she is always sorry when Christmas is over because she knows that after her family has hung up their stockings on Christmas Eve it will be a whole year before any one of them will hang up anything again.
On this feast of the Holy Family, how many of us, looking back, thank God that our mothers sacrificed their impulse to be imptient.
Our families will never be like the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Yet you can strive toward that ideal by your personal sacrifices

Bernard Bush in his book, Belonging, states as clearly as peering through a magnifying glass, “To share another’s life you must be willing to sacrifice yourself and to affirm another’s freedom means sacrificing your own selfishness.”
If you refuse to sacrifice you will become prisoners of your possessions and your own desires.
Richard North Patterson in his novel, Protect and Defend, one character said, “People of obsessive ambition sacrifice so much of value in themselves and in their lives that, when they fail, there’s nothing left inside.”
There are self-sacrificers who use self-sacrifice to cloak their self-seeking and become bitter when people don’t praise them.
The fact is that community is real when there is a welcome as self-sacrificing as logs that burn themselves to ashes
In his encyclical, On the Development of Peoples, Pope Paul VI wrote, “Christians know that union with the sacrifice of our Savior contributes to the building up of the Body of Christ.”
In the Mystical Body of Christ, there are people you will never know, never see, yet on the mystical level, you are as intimately united with them as with the members of your family.
But you must be actively conscious of this intimate union with all the members of Christ’s Mystical Body.
Jo Carr tells about a children's Christmas program she once attended: "All the songs had been sung, and the candles lit. The shepherds had come to peek at the baby, and the wise men had brought their gifts. The angels had given their message. Then all the cast in the story of the first Christmas began to leave...wise men, shepherds, angels. Only Mary and Joseph and the child remained. Then Joseph turned to go. And Mary, glancing back at the crib, began to follow. But suddenly she turned back, snatched up the baby doll by the foot, clutched it under her arm, and left
Sometimes like that little girl, you may forget that Jesus with all his power is within you motivating you to sacrifice yourself for the others in your family as Jesus did by laying down his life for you.
How often, for example, do you sacrifice your preferences in favor of what another member of your family wants?
How willing are you, for example, to sacrifice your comfort in order to get involved in a cause?
For example, the cause of peace as opposed to the continuing warfare in Iraq.
How willing are you, for example, to sacrifice your time to help your children or grandchildren with their homework or just spend some quality time relaxing with them?
Sacrifice is not just one long string of excruciating minuses stretched like a hangman’s rope to choke the joy of living our of you.

At Christmas you need to share not only with your own family, but your extended family and relatives, friends, co workers and parishioners.
And share not only at Christmas but all throughout the year.

Humor: Young Harold and young Peter didn’t like each other too well. But they were both in the Sunday School Christmas pageant. Harold was the innkeeper. Peter was Joseph. And Peter knew that Harold would do something, in front of all those people, to embarrass him. He did.
Joseph (Peter) and Mary came up to the innkeeper (Harold), expecting of course, to be
turned away. But Harold the innkeeper said, “Come right in, we’ve got lots of room.”
Joseph was ready for this. Looking past the innkeeper, he said to Mary. “Nah. This place
is a dump. Let’s go sleep in the barn.”


THOUGHT: Always make sacrifices for your family.