AN EARLIER HEAVEN
Viewed from a satellite in space, especially at night, an
erupting volcano on earth can be clearly visible. Even a bush fire can be seen.
If the satellite had a high precision camera it could pick up the smaller fires
of families cooking in the open. And we
can imagine a lens that identifies the smallest flicker of flame on earth. Perhaps we can go further. With the eye of the
spirit, we can see (in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins) the world
….
charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from
shook foil.
This
perspective from space can serve as a parable.
There are the people and the events that appear in our headlines and
sound bites. There are also those
revealed in the more modest reaches of the social media. But the majority of people and events are
hidden from everyone except the handful immediately concerned. Yet the tiniest human effort, even if only
known to one person – the one who experiences it, does not go unnoticed.
Among the
ripples that swirl around Christmas is the family. Jesus was born into a family. Despite its unique nature it had all the
marks of what we know as family. Nothing
much is spelt out for us but we quickly pick up the intensity of the mother’s
care and the prodigious alacrity of Joseph. True, the few details we are given tell us
this is no ordinary family – if our child went missing we would not expect to
find her sitting among a bunch of university professors, “listening to them and
asking them questions” – but for the most part they led an ordinary life. They were like any other family in Nazareth,
a town – by the way - so unknown it appeared in no contemporary records.
On the
first Sunday after Christmas we celebrate this family and we celebrate our own
families, which vary in a spectrum from immensely happy to extremely
dysfunctional. A good family gives us a
great start in life but we can survive and surmount a dysfunctional one. Lots of people have.
We have
this moment to celebrate family – this amazing human institution where we find
ourselves in our love for each other, where even our tiniest words and gestures
have an impact – and are held by the One created this universe and designed the
first family. “A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”
(George Bernard Shaw).
30 December 2018 the
Holy Family
Ben Sira 3:2 … 24 Colossians
3:12-21 Luke 2:41-52
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