St. Maria Goretti

Everybody likes to do their own thing. As 21^st Century Americans we’re famous for our rugged individualism. Everybody wants to be in charge. Nobody wants to follow. Nobody wants to “submit” to the will of others. And we call this freedom. When I was growing up, my grandfather used to say that the problem with the world was that there were too many chiefs, and not enough Indians. As a young child, I never understood what this meant. I guess that maybe I thought my grandfather was prejudiced against Native Americans or something. As I got older, I can remember one of my aunts saying that “There are too many cooks in the kitchen”. Now I took this quite literally and thought she was talking about the competition my Italian aunts seemed to have over food. But she too was trying to express the fact that everybody wanted to be in charge. When I went to seminary, I had a priest/professor who taught moral theology who was always saying that everybody wants to be God. He said we all break the First Commandment the most, because we set ourselves up as ‘false gods’. We have a problem here, folks. Everybody wants to do things their own way. You can’t do that in a family. You can’t do that in a Church. We can’t even do it as the human race. If Jesus, Mary, and Joseph teach us anything, it is that we need to submit to the will of God.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Family. And this year, we hear this reading of the story of Jesus getting lost in the Temple. And as we do, you can imagine the fear and concern that Mary and Joseph have when they can’t find their son. This is way before Amber Alerts, but even two thousand years ago, it was a pretty scary thing. They find the child Jesus in the Temple. And yeah, He may be about His Father’s business, but He was still in trouble with Mary and Joseph. On this occasion, Jesus realized how much He had hurt Mary and Joseph. The Gospel text says, that Jesus went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. Did you catch that? Jesus, who was God come down to earth, became obedient to His father and mother. We know that both Mary and Joseph were also obedient. They were obedient to God and to one another. How did the Holy Family make things work? There was a lot of obedience involved. There was a lot of getting out of yourself, and trusting in God and trusting in others. Let’s not miss this lesson today.

We can’t leave this church today thinking that obedience was something that was great for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, two-thousand years ago, but that it has no meaning for us, sophisticated, modern people in 2007. For far too many people, obedience is perceived to be oppressive, passive, anti-human, and by most current intellectual and even spiritual norms, politically incorrect. Religious-wise, it is politically incorrect to talk about obedience today, in the family or in the Church. So many people see obedience as a negative thing. We think of obedience as something that always has the word ‘blind’ in front of it. Even our own Catholic theologians and leadership many times treat obedience with embarrassed silence. This Feast Day and this Gospel reading remind all of us that we need to be more obedient. We can’t get around it. Jesus was obedient to Joseph and Mary. Obedience is the virtue that we most need to perfect in our lives as Christians, especially in the middle of a world that daily makes assaults on what we believe and hold dear. Obedience is the forgotten virtue today. We treat it like a dirty word. And that’s wrong. Obedience can free us from so much that can contaminate our Christian life, but even more, Obedience is the one gift from you, that the Church and our world is now most in need of today. We have so many people in Hollywood, in Washington D.C., and even within our own Church who fear nothing more than they fear our being obedient. They quit being obedient to God a long time ago, and nothing irks them more than our obedience to God today. These individuals have not hesitated to use their authority and power to force their will on the rest of us. You want to know why there’s so much dissent in the Catholic Church today? It’s because these aging, pseudo-radicals in the media, in government, and even in several U.S. bishops offices, have made it a categorical imperative to challenge, and discredit, and replace every authority that we have, excluding of course, their own. Our obedience to God is our best defense against their foolishness. We like Jesus, and Mary, and Joseph need to be obedient, to God and to the Church.

True obedience is not just mere submission. It is an act of Faith. It is realizing that there is something bigger going on here than just “me.me.me.” True obedience demands a solidarity with our leaders, an enthusiastic joining together to build the Kingdom of God as a family, as a Parish, and as a Church. We are in this together. Obedience to the truth is for all of us. Who are we to play god? How can we usurp God’s authority? How can any among us truly “dissent” or believe that our own opinions are truth? We can’t.

Not if we’re honest!

Obedience comes in many forms. We all need to be more obedient in our homes, at work, at school, in our marriages, and in our families. In all humility, we sometimes just have to admit that somebody else might know better than we do. Our obedience can change everything.

God conquered the disobedience of Adam and Eve with the obedience of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. God can also conquer the disobedience in the world today and in the Church today, with our obedience. Let us conform our hearts to His Divine Will. Just as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did. It’s how they became the Holy Family. It’s how we can make our families holy too!

We don’t need to all be chiefs. We don’t need to all be cooks. And we’re certainly not all gods. Let’s let God be God in 2007! And how about if we all just do our best to serve Him, as individuals and as a family.

May God bless us on this Feast Day, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti… Pray for us !!!