Weekly THIS AND THAT for December 28, 2008: Becoming an Adult Believer Within a Family

Feast of the Holy Family
Our Lady of Grace
December 28, 2009

Becoming an Adult Believer Within a Family
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


Two Friends

Two friends of mine, Bill and Doris, came to see me last week and among other things we talked about their pain over asking their 18-year old son finally to leave their home because of his beliefs and behavior.

That was six long years ago and they have not heard from him since. Talk about pain!

Being in their presence reminded me that being a family isn’t easy; remaining a family is even more difficult.


The Task of Parents

In our sharing, I mentioned that the task of parents in childhood is to offer their children a context, a space – limits within which to grow.

And having a First Grader grow into an Eighth Grader is akin to having a balloon slowly fill with helium and occupy the space between your hands.

Your child, your grandchild, needs that containment, if he/she is not to float off into the air.

In these early years, the child is called to grow in faith; parents are called to be (1) Models of faith and, very importantly, to be the (2) Tangible limits for that growth.

They set the parameters, if you will.


The Task of Son or Daughter

However, in the teenage years, the balloon, having filled the space, now wants to push beyond the space. The high school son or daughter wants to extend and expand the limits that were set in childhood.

The tasks for both parents and child have also been redefined. The child, while trying to be true to his or her own beliefs, is challenged to remain obedient to his parents.

The parents, while trying to maintain the context for faith and moral development, struggle at being patient and pray for guidance and the ability to accept their child as he/she is.


The Gospel

It is right here – in this type of family tension – that our gospel contains a special lesson for young people and for adults.

To young people, it says that there’s a time in life when we begin to experience the first movements out of childhood into adulthood.

We begin to think for ourselves and to ask questions about things that we’ve never thought about before.

From a religious point of view, it says that there is a time in life when we must make our own, the faith that we received from our parents and make it our own within our own limits.

There is a time when we must begin to make the transition from being a Christian child to being a Christian adult.


The Challenge

But this is a terrible critical time for both young people and their parents, as it was for my friends Bill and Doris, as it was for Joseph and Mary in St. Luke’s Gospel that we just heard proclaimed.

The account describes Jesus’ transition form religious childhood to religious adulthood.

And what is more important to note is that he suggests that this transition was difficult not only for Jesus, but also for his parents.

It was trying, not because Jesus or his parents did anything wrong. It was trying because they were a human family.

In other words, Jesus was feeling the death of his childhood limits set by his parents, and the birth of his adulthood limits set by himself, as every human being does.

This should come as no surprise for Sacred Scripture tells us that he was like us in all things but sin.

And Mary and Joseph had to adjust to the death of Jesus the child and the birth of Jesus the adult – and that wasn’t easy.


The Final Paragraph

The final paragraph of today’s Gospel is especially helpful here.

It holds an important lesson for families to grasp on this Feast of the Holy Family, a lesson that can shed some light on the alienation and estrangement we may have felt in the past or perhaps still do.

It reads: “Jesus went with is parents back to Nazareth and was obedient to them; and Mary treasured all these things and reflected on them in her heart.”

In other words, both Jesus and his parents are living out the transition of his own parental childhood limits to his own adulthood limits, and Mary and Joseph are struggling to do this in harmony with him and with understanding.

The struggle from Jesus’ side is obedience to their limits against what, in his heart, he knows he has to be doing as an adult, within his own limits.

On Mary and Joseph’s side, it means patience and praying for guidance in this critical period of their child’s life.

In the end, observe that it’s neither parent nor child who win or loose, for, while Jesus does return with them “in obedience” he does tell them very clearly, “Didn’t you know I must be about my Father’s business?”


Conclusion

Sometimes the transition from a childhood to an adult faith is reasonably smooth. Most of the times it is terribly painful.

What the pain seems to be about is letting something of the-way-we-were-used-to-relating, die.

This is the lesson today’s Gospel offers us. This is the message of today’s Feast of the Holy Family.