4th Sunday of Advent (December 10-11, 2016)

How Can God’s Dream for Your Family’s Holiness Become a Reality?
What do we dream about? When our mind wanders in a daydream, or when we dream during sleep, what captivates our imaginations?  Some dream about great hopes for themselves or others, for the future. Others may worry and their dreams are filled with regrets or fears. Our dreams reveal something about ourselves and about our desires, our present reality.

Advent is a season of dreaming, a time of hopeful waiting, it is the dreaming and waiting for families. Perhaps many of us here might be dreaming lately of presents or special memories on Christmas? And the Church, herself a family of families, puts before us on this Sunday a great dream from a great dreamer, a family man and a man of faith, St. Joseph, the main figure in our Gospel from Matthew, and also the patron of this parish.
Joseph’s dream relates to his family. The angel, God’s messenger, declares a miraculous birth that will come from within his own family.  [And what a family! The extended family of King David, its lineage stretching back 42 generations, filled with faithful and infamous persons.] From this extended family will come an amazing dream for Joseph and his fiancée (to be betrothed was a formal, legally-binding engagement in the Jewish world) Mary who is pregnant and for Mary’s son.  Joseph’s dream is at first fearful, he is unsure what to do with a pregnant fiancée and is worrying about what the future might hold. He didn’t plan for this, and neither did Mary.  He is not in control, and this can make anyone afraid.

But even in his fear, the angel of the Lord lets Joseph and Mary in on God’s great plan – God’s dream, you might say -- for their family. He and Mary will be a Holy Family, a family singularly blessed. The Holy Spirit, God Himself, has come upon Mary to give her a gift greater than she could ever have dreamt of. Joseph is invited to be the foster-father of the Messiah, the long-awaited Savior of his people, the one who is able to save us from any and all sin, to save us from ourselves. The one hope of all the people of God throughout thousands of years was going to be fulfilled. Jesus would be born, and God would be with us.

But before this dream can become a reality, a decision must take place. Some concrete action or assent to God’s plan. Joseph’s dream can begin to become a reality only if he takes the first step. He must decide to believe in God’s message, to trust even if he doesn’t fully understand. And Joseph does! He who maybe he had never even heard of the Holy Spirit before, who is flustered and hurt by the pregnancy of his fiancée through a means beyond him, puts his trust in God’s dream for his family, overcomes his fear, and does as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He takes Mary into his home as his wife.
And with Joseph’s decision to follow God’s dream for his family, Joseph experiences the greatest gift that one can receive: God-with-us, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ in his own home and in his own family. It was not easy, it was chaotic and they were poor, but there was abundant love and mercy and joy. God’s dream became a reality for the Holy Family one day at a time, one loving moment and loving action at a time. Day after day Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us, lived among them, and blessed them, showing Joseph how to love, how to make God’s dream come true in his own life, in his own family. What about us and our families? Do we dream for a more loving, more merciful, more joy-filled family life? Are we aware that God has a great dream for us and for our holiness, our thriving and our mutual love?

God desires that we become members in a holy family, he desires this as our true good more than we could ever desire it for ourselves. But let’s look at what a dream-realized holy family might look like, and how we might find ourselves in one. We’ve all come from one family or another. Even if we do not associate with any family at the present, we are still members of the family of God’s Church, God’s family on earth. But many of us do have immediate families that we are part of on a daily basis, whether we live under the same roof or not.

And while the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is presented by the Church as a model family to inspire us and give us hope, for us right now on earth, there is no ideal, abstract husband-and-wife-and-kids family that we must live up to or compare ourselves with. We are who we are, and God’s dream for us is simply that we might more and more experience the holiness, truth, and love of His Sons and Daughters, as members of His family.

Let’s be honest, this is a messy, chaotic, and life-long process. Making God’s dream a reality -- our holiness and holier families – isn’t easy. It’s very hard to love – very hard to choose and act for another’s good, for it means we give up control and can’t always do what we want. We fail to live up to God’s dream, God’s will. We are all at times selfish and difficult to be.    We sin and our sin hurts ourselves and one another. We try to control reality, rather than let God’s dream for ourselves and our families become the reality around us through faith, hope, and love. But here’s the good news. Just as Joseph chose to follow God’s great dream for his family, and chose to do so with God’s grace. Joseph with Mary his wife and their son Jesus made God’s dream a reality by decision, by a choice, even a daily choice, to love.

As Catholics, we know that love isn’t a feeling, an emotion, or chemical reaction…love is a choice! Love is choosing and acting for another’s true good. And though we don’t think of it this way, love can be expressed by changing a dirty diaper perhaps more than it is expressed on a date between sweethearts. Love within families can believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. So it is choices to love, choices that we might make at every moment, or every minute, these make up the path for us to making God’s dream for our families a reality.  

Please know that I struggle with this, too. I have been a spiritual father, as a priest in the family of the Church for six months now. Let me admit before you it is not easy and I fail often to live up to the call to love, the call to die to myself and my will in the moment…to sacrifice that I might give of myself for the good of you my family, the Church. Please forgive me and pray for me and I will pray for you, but know that I want to journey with you and choose to love, that together as a family of families, our Church might experience the great dream of love and joy that God has for us.

When Jesus begins to be born and present in our family, at the dinner table, in the little moments of life, In our communal prayer, we are empowered to live amazing lives. Our lives become holy because Jesus is preset within them, within our families. We find the strength to persevere through life’s challenging moments with the strength of Jesus in our midst. We find the grace to be pure and chaste appropriate to our state in life, and overcome temptations to objectify people instead of choosing truly to love them. We see the gift of charity, simplicity, and humility instead of buying into our society’s need for material status and possessions. God has a dream for our family: that we be holy because of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God-with us! Do we want to make this dream a reality? If so, may we choose to love.