My friends, this week finds us on the last Sunday of 2025!  As one year ends and we all look forward to a new year of possibilities, it is good to review what the last year has been – both the joys and the sorrows too.  This type of review is a good thing as it helps us to be honest with ourselves about what has been good and what perhaps we could change to be better at who we are meant to be. 

   As I wrote this, I was reminded of a very good friend and mentor over the years of my priesthood, Sister Marie Regine Redig, whose friends and family fondly called her, Gina.  Until it was announced that I would be ordained in 2008, we never knew of this School Sister of Notre Dame, as Gina belonged to an extended line of the Redig family we weren’t acquainted with.

   Gina died a couple of years ago; some of you perhaps met her on Zoom masses during the 1^st outbreak of Covid in 2020.  She came into our lives almost 20 years ago, and travelled from Milwaukee to attend my ordination, celebrating with us what she herself was unable to do 70 years earlier when she chose religious life over her true calling to priesthood, a fact she only shared with us shortly before her death.  All we knew in the early years of our relationship with her was that she truly believed that women were called to ordination, and was happy to celebrate that fact with us. 

   So, over the years she read my homilies each week and was my best critique-r, let’s say, mentor and friend.  I specifically remember one time when she called me to task for, in her words, “Kathy, you shared 9 paragraphs before even mentioning the Scriptures!”  Clearly, she thought it should be the other way around.  I keep that in mind as I and the Spirit prepare weekly homilies, even though I have always felt that the homilies must be tied to the weekly readings from Scripture. 

   So, in deference to Gina, and after only 4 paragraphs, let’s look at today’s Scripture readings:  Beginning with Sirach, then Paul and Luke, each one has something to tell  us about “families.”  We always call that original family of Mary and Joseph and Jesus the “Holy Family,”  but the chosen readings for this Sunday really suggest that all families are “holy,” or have the potential to be. 

   Sirach begins in a rather general way stating that we all should, “revere and honor [our] parents.”  That is one of those “easy-peasy” sounding statements that in real-life isn’t as easy to do for some as for others.  Obviously, if one comes from a good and loving family, this command is easier to fulfill than for those who grew up in less loving homes. 

   Paul, in his letter to the Colossians instructs the people to “put on love” because that makes, “all else perfect” and binds the rest together” – all the other good virtues that he mentions, “kindness, gentleness, humility and patience.” And as followers of Jesus, Paul recommends that we “do all in the name of Jesus.”  This reminds me of a poster y held by a demonstrator last Monday on Main Street, Winona, “Who would Jesus Deport?”

   Another recommendation from Paul in today’s 2^nd reading which is an update in the Priests for Equality translation of Scripture that we use here speaks of those in committed relationships, “submitting to each other – a good update most women feel, as we remember the old version which called only for “women submitting to their husbands.” This, by the way, left out all the homosexual couples with regard to their relationships.  The old translation also said that “men,” on the other hand, were “to love their wives.”  Robert mentioned over the years that he thought that men had the harder task, “in loving,” to which I responded, “It seems that if men truly ‘loved’ their wives, they wouldn’t ask for this one-sided submission!  Balance, it seems, is best!

   This is true of his final admonition with regard to children – “Don’t nag them, lest they lose heart” – and incidentally, this is probably true with regard to committed partners as well.

   Luke’s gospel selection for today gives us a few good lessons as well for family life.  And in keeping with our focus on trying to really understand the probable lives that Mary and Joseph lived, these lessons are good, not only with regard to them, but us as well. 

   From the get-go almost, this young couple are told, not only hope-filled ideas about who their little son would become, “the rise and fall of many,” but sad ideas as well, “a sign that will be rejected.”  Understandably, as Scripture tells us, “Mary pondered all these things in her heart.” 

   And as we think about it, is not much of this the same for any of us who have the privilege of bearing and/or raising children, whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually?  We never know, at the beginning what these new, little lives will become –we do, as Mary and Joseph did, walk in faith, hoping and praying that what we try will be for the best for those entrusted to our care.  So, we have real models to follow in Mary and Joseph.

   My friends, in conclusion then, I would like to bring our focus back to our forebears, Mary and Joseph, to hopefully give us a truer picture of who these “familiar” folks may have truly been. First, it’s important to shine a bright light on their possible relationship.   

   So, to begin with, Mary and Joseph had to have been in love with each other in order to give the human Jesus what he needed to then, eventually, give back so profoundly to his world as an adult.  To quote a lovely and true line from, The Sound of Music, “nothing comes from nothing.”  Mary and Joseph showed Jesus, “the way,” through daily, “loving actions,” so that he could eventually, show the rest of us, “the way.” 

   Theologically, we sometimes, as a Church get, “lost in the weeds,” proclaiming a “sexless” relationship between Mary and Joseph, who for too long, in the person of Joseph being presented as “a caretaker” husband devoid of any physical or expressed love toward Mary, or for that matter, she for him.  Sadly, because the celibate men of our Church have for too long had a “troubled” relationship with their own sexual selves, they gave that same, “troubled” relationship to these two significant people of that first, “holy” family. 

   We need say no more, except to lift up the good that our God most likely intended by giving us sexual bodies and desires to express in a myriad of ways; as celibates, married, or in some way, committed relationships that are expressed in hetero or homosexual ways in order to give strength, support, and affection to each other, in our personal ups and downs. Having the particular type of support that each of us is called to in our lives, then opens us up for additional loving-centered acts in our greater world. 

   Perhaps a final thought on this Holy Family Sunday is to lift up to the light of day, what all the “loving” was really intended to do, in the end.  So many people, in Jesus’ time, awaiting “The Messiah,”  wanted an earthly being of strength to establish a “kingdom” that would put down their “enemies”—but the trouble with that, and why Jesus would ultimately be rejected in his own time and place, was the fact that he came to establish a “kin-dom,” as opposed to a “kingdom” which was not about “power-over,” but “power-for,” each of us.  Amen? Amen!