Carol Service and Jubilee of the Family
28 December 2015

Dear brothers and sisters

We gather today for our annual diocesan Carol Service in support of our Paisley SPRED group. The Gospels proclaim the story of Christmas as a festival of songs or carols, from Mary’s Magnificat and the Benedictus of Zachariah, to the Hosannah Chorus of Angels over the Shepherds and the song of Simeon as he holds in his arms the Light of the World. So it is only right and fitting that we gather to retell the same story of our salvation in gladness and song.

Today, in this service of Lessons and Carols we also celebrate the Holy Year of Mercy Jubilee of Families and we welcome with great joy the families and young people who join us today. If the story of Christmas is proclaimed in song it is, for all that, the story of a family -Jesus, Mary and Joseph- starting out on their journey through life, and the faithfulness of this little family on their own vocational pilgrimage will result, indeed, in the salvation of the world.

The Sunday readings for the Feast of the Holy Family, which we heard only yesterday, presented us with two families on pilgrimage to the house of God. In the First Reading Hannah and her husband bring their son Samuel to the Temple to consecrate him to the Lord. In the same way, in the Gospel, Joseph and Mary go up with their son, Jesus, as pilgrims to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover.

It is part of our Catholic tradition to go on pilgrimage to shrines and places that are holy and dear to us, just as we do today as we come in a certain pilgrimage to our Cathedral to contemplate the wonder of our salvation. Whenever we set out on pilgrimage we do so with special intentions in our hearts and with great faith that God will hear us in that holy place when we arrive and be gracious to us there. In this Year of Grace, many Catholics, like you, are making their way to their Cathedral Holy Doors, sure that they will find mercy for themselves and their families.

Yesterday’s Scriptures showed us whole families going together on pilgrimage. Whether in Elkanah, Hannah and Samuel or in Joseph, Mary and Jesus, it is family units of fathers, mothers and children together who go up to the house of the Lord to pray, make offerings and obtain blessings. Reflecting on these events helps us see our own family lives as a series of pilgrimages, small and great.

Our daily family life, day in and day out, year after year, becomes a sacred pilgrimage whenever it is surrounded and accompanied by family prayer. As mums and dads start early to teach their little ones to pray and take them to Church each week they follow the same path as Mary and Joseph who taught Jesus how to pray! According to Jewish custom, each day Mary, Joseph and Jesus would pray together and each Sabbath they would go to the synagogue to listen to readings from the Law and the Prophets, and to praise the Lord with the assembly.

Pope Francis asked yesterday: What can be more beautiful than for a father and mother to bless their children at the beginning and end of each day by tracing a little sign of the Cross on their forehead just like they did on the day of their baptism? The little gesture is already a prayer, the simplest and most beautiful prayer of parents for their children: to bless them and entrust them to the Lord, just like Joseph and Mary, so that God protects and supports them throughout the day. Another lovely family prayer is the grace before meals where the family thanks God for the gift of food and learns to share what they have with those in greater need. These may all be very little gestures but they point to the great role of formation of the young played by families in the pilgrimage of everyday life.

Annually, of course, Jesus, Mary and Joseph went on the Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem where they prayed the psalm: I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ And now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem, just as we pray the Rosary now as we make our way to our own holy places.

By going on annual pilgrimages together like the Holy Family, all families make real and visible their own family journey towards a life-long common goal and how important it is for our families to journey together towards a single goal! They have been given by God a road to travel together. No doubt it is a road along which they will meet with difficulties as well as moments of joy and consolation, but it is surely the most blessed gift when they can start, journey and finish the journey together, no matter how sore the difficulties along the way.

The pilgrimage to the Temple of Jesus, Mary and Joseph which Luke records in his Gospel shows how all family journeys are made up of crosses and joys. On that occasion, instead of returning home with his family, Jesus stayed in Jerusalem without telling his parents and went missing for three days, causing great distress to Mary and Joseph who were unable to find him. For this little escapade, Pope Francis says Jesus probably had to beg forgiveness of his parents. Mary’s question to Him, moreover, reveals the concern and anguish only parents really know and which she and Joseph keenly felt. It is beautiful that the Gospel records certain misunderstandings to have taken place even in the Holy Family which, being natural in human life, must have been not uncommon, even to them. Even though Jesus and Mary are without sin, they would not always have seen things in the same way and would have had to work hard to make allowances for each other. What matters is not that there were moments of tension but how they resolved them. Mary’s anxiety comes out not as an angry rebuke but as a gentle, maternal question for her son’s consideration. Any hurt she felt she tries to keep to herself, pondering it in her heart. Meanwhile Jesus, returning home with them, tried to remain closer than ever to them as a sign of His complete affection and obedience. Moments like these are part and parcel of the pilgrimage of every family. Tensions, misunderstandings, different points of view are the stuff of life, where everyone searches to find their own unique vocation but all within the common life of the family. Nor are they any less keen in families with special needs, where parents have even more anxieties to ponder alone in their hearts, even though their children be still the apple of their eyes.

It is not easy to have consideration for each other and make allowances for everyone’s point of view, abilities and limitations. It was not easy even for Jesus, Mary and Joseph. But as long as we try our best the Lord transforms these very moments into opportunities to grow, to ask for and to receive forgiveness, to show love, kindness and obedience. At the end of that pilgrimage Jesus, Mary and Joseph returned home to Nazareth because pilgrimage never ends but God calls us to take up the journey anew in our everyday lives.

In the Year of Mercy, every Christian family should be a special witness to the experience of the joy of forgiveness and acceptance. Forgiveness is the essence of the kind of love that understands mistakes, foibles, weakness and mends or allows for them. In families above all, mankind learns the most important lesson of all, how to forgive, forget, reconcile and accept.

Let us never lose confidence in the family! It is a beautiful place where we can truly open our hearts to one another and hide nothing. Wherever there is real love there is also understanding and forgiveness and surely the pilgrimage of daily family life is the one pilgrimage the world and Church need more than ever.