Maybe this is just me, have you ever thought about why Jesus is part of a family? Besides needing a mother to give him our humanity, why did he have a family just like us? Could he have just been born, quickly become an adult, and made the world a better place in like two seconds? Why did he need to grow up like us, learn like us, listen to our parents like us, and be like us? Why was that needed? Or why did God choose for him to go through the whole family cycle, from being born to dying? Because he lived like us except without sin. Because he has experienced what it is like being a human. Because he has loved like us. Because he knows exactly what we do because he has done it, except without sin. He is exactly like us.
This is a good thing because he shows us the way that we are to live. The way to get to Heaven is being like Jesus, acting like Jesus. If you want to know how to live, then be like Jesus. Do everything that he did, and you will most likely get to Heaven. Now are we doing that? Are we being like Jesus in every action? Are we like Christ?
More so with celebrating the Holy Family today, we also have other role models as well with Joseph and Mary. They showed Jesus how to live and be a human and experience everything, so we can also learn from them and what they did as well. Mary was always saying yes to God and what he wanted, and Joseph, even though we do not hear him say much, he was always there wanting to help. Always there ready to teach and show Jesus how to live as a man.
One thing that I do want to highlight is what we see in the Gospel today. That Joseph was warned in a dream to leave for Egypt to protect Jesus and then return but return to Nazareth. He did not want to put Jesus or Mary into danger, and I think that is something we all can learn from. We know what will lead us to sin or doing something that is not of God. We have sinned or not done the just thing plenty of times to know that we talk to this one person, or do this one thing or things, then it will lead us close to temptations, and we might not be able to say no to sin. So have you thought of that one thing that leads you to temptation and how can you avoid that?
Brothers and sisters, sometimes it is hard to say no to sin when we are tempted, and it is good to see when and how we are tempted to say away from it. We all know how easy it is to sin, but it is hard to say no to it and that is why if we can get away from the temptation the better time we can stay away.
There are other things we can glean from the holy family by just trying to be like them. They live the same lives as us, so they understand what we are going through and they are there to either intercede for us, Mary and Joseph, or to help us, Jesus of course. Try to learn from them and be like them and that will go a long way to getting to Heaven.
Given on the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph Year A