Episode 123140: 12/28/25 The Holy Family

0:01 Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you. And with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord. Chapter 2, verses 13-15 and verses 19-23. When the Magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.

0:57 Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled. Out of Egypt I have called my son. When Herod had died, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. He rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there. and because he had been warned in a dream to depart for the region of Galilee, he went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled. He shall be called a Nazarene. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Wait till you have a seat.

1:51 So I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but years ago my mom had, she had, she called me, I don't know if she called me or she like had the examples of this, but it was the example of two nativity sets. And it was just like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And one was, here's baby Jesus in the manger in the crib. Here's Mary kneeling next to Jesus. And then here's Joseph kneeling next to Jesus too. And the other one was same baby in the crib, Mary kneeling, and Joseph's like standing guard with like a staff in his hand. And my mom was like, okay, okay. She had my, wanted to ask my opinion on this. And I thought she'd like, which one do you like? Her question was, she said, which one is more theologically appropriate? Like, would Joseph be kneeling or should he be standing? Because, I mean, he's kneeling because here's God, it's Jesus right here in the flesh. In front of him, he should be kneeling. But also, he's got a job to do.

2:43 He's got to guard the Holy Family. He's got to guard Mary and Jesus. So which one is more theologically appropriate? And originally I thought, mom, that's a silly question. That's so ridiculous. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, wow, that's a really good question. That's a fantastic question. And in fact, it is the heart of, I think sometimes we forget the gospel today. The gospel today, that Joseph had a job.

3:06 And that job was so important. Sometimes we give Joseph a hard time in the fact that in the Holy Family, he's the only one in the whole trio who has sin. Here's Jesus, who's God himself. Here's Mary, who's born without sin, conceived without sin, preserved from sin. And here's Joseph, who's the only sinner there. but we forget that he his role in the life of the holy family was massively important that yes he was called to worship his god Jesus Christ but he was also called to do something else he was also called to guard Jesus Christ here's Mary and Joseph who were called to do different things I I was recently talking to a new mom and uh and she talked about how uh whenever her child makes fuss, fusses in the middle of the night, like she says, yeah, I wake up and my husband just, he sleeps right through it. They've actually had, they've done a study. This is not a joke.

3:57 They've actually done a study where they have parents, they're sleeping and the baby makes noise. The mom are the ones who wake up and the father sleeps right through it. Whenever the baby makes noise, mom wakes up right away. Dads oftentimes sleep right through it. And as they were talking about this, discussing this study, and one of the people like, oh, yep, figures, the guys. But then they said, the study went on and they said, even though, well, when the baby makes noise, the mom wakes up and the father sleeps through it. When there's noise from outside the house, the father wakes up and the mom sleeps through it. Because here's this, what are the roles of this family? What the role of the family is, here's the mom, she's there to, the husband's there to protect life. The mom's there to nurture life. You know, it's interesting, every time I have marriage prep, There's always a question or a statement that comes up that the couples get to talk about. And the question is, the statement is, we've discussed the expectations each of us has as to a role as husband and wife.

4:56 So that's the statement. And they either say, we agree, we disagree, we're uncertain. Again, we discussed the roles, the expectations each of us has as to a role as husband and wife. And sometimes they ask the question, they say, the couples will say, what do you mean by roles? And I always say, what do you mean by roles? because sometimes they look at and say tasks, like, okay, so I'll do these tasks and they'll do these tasks or we'll do these tasks together. Sometimes by roles, they think, are we gonna do things as a team? Are we gonna kind of divide and conquer? There was one man, one future husband, who when it came to this and I said, what do you think your role is? He had a quick answer. It was a thoughtful answer, but he knew it right away. He said, oh, I guess I see in my marriage, my role is to be the provider and the protector. I was like, wow, yeah, wow, yes. Out of 22 years of marriage prep, there's one husband-to-be who said clearly, and my role, I know it, to be the provider and the protector.

6:02 And I wonder about that, like why was that unique? Now, of course, people can bristle at this and say, are you saying moms can't provide, moms can't protect? No, we all know plenty of moms who offer provision. We know plenty of moms who protect. Him saying that he is the provider and protector says nothing about a woman's inability, but it says everything about his responsibility. Because we could stiffen when a husband says, no, my job is, my role is to provide and protect. But I could ask any wife and say, would you rather, would you rather have a husband who says, that's not my job? It might be a little bit like, it makes me feel uncomfortable if a husband says, yeah, my role is to provide and protect, but wouldn't it make you even more uncomfortable, make all of us even more uncomfortable if a husband were to say, that's not my job at all? You know, because I've noted this before, but it is, I would say this, to talk in general terms, there's one temptation a lot of women face in relationships and there's one temptation a lot of men face in relationships. A lot of times, in marriages, in life, the wife's temptation is to control.

7:16 And just, I want to make sure it's all taken care of. And the men's temptation, man's temptation, is to passivity. Like, yeah, as long as you've got it, that's great. You take care of it. And it starts early in relationships. I see it very clearly, especially in marriage prep and like the wedding preparation. Because a lot of times, and it works, right? Because here's this wife, she's planned, she's thought about her wedding for a long, long time. And so she actually cares. And so, and she's probably good at it too. And so she's making all these, all these decisions. And the guy's like, great. Yeah, sure. And he's just, he's going along and even as he's involved, he's just like, I'm here to support. I'm just kind of that. So she's got the control. She gets to have fashion the wedding that she wants. He gets to be like, yeah, I'm helping you fashion the wedding you want by saying, yes, dear. And then what happens is they move into an apartment, and move into a house. And he probably hasn't given much thought and just, again, stereotypes, but he probably hasn't given much thought to decorating their new home.

8:09 But she's probably, no, I know exactly where I want things to go when I get in there. He's probably like, great, where should I put these pillows? Because here's her temptation. Temptation is to control and the temptation is to passivity. And then there was a child. I mean, I've talked to so many new dads who've said like, yeah, I feel helpless. Like, I'm just kind of like in the background, like, okay, yeah, keep the baby alive, mom. You know, that kind of situation. Because why? Because she seems to know exactly what she's doing and he's kind of there as backup. And yet, it's one of those situations where that works really, really well until it stops working really, really well. It works really well until she starts thinking, why do I have to be responsible for everything around here? Why do I have to do everything around here? And he's like, why do I have no say around here? It's what happens is there has to be a shift. And the shift is not like he takes control and the ship is, she goes passive.

9:01 That's not it. In fact, I would say this again and again. For every man whose temptation is passivity, which might not be in every situation, but in some situations, the man whose temptation is passivity, he is called to do this. He's called to reject passivity and embrace, not embrace control, but embrace responsibility.

9:21 Every wife, every woman whose temptation is control, she's called to reject control and not embrace passivity, but to embrace trust. so and think about this if if a couple does that if the man rejects passivity embrace responsibility doesn't mean he's in charge all of a sudden it means that he's engaged all of a sudden and if she rejects control and embraces trust it doesn't mean that she's like i don't care anymore i'm carefree it means like no we're working we have to work together now because if you take responsibility now i have to trust that you're going to follow through on the responsibility you've taken the holy family of jesus mary and joseph would have had to look like this. We've had to look like this. Joseph would have been the kind of man who would reject passivity and embrace responsibility. We see it in the gospel today, right? He gets up, he takes his family, he leads them. Mary would have to be the person. I mean, she is the saint, right? Reject control and embraces trust. From the moment we see Mary, what she say, behold, I'm the handmaid of the Lord.

10:18 I trust you. I trust the messenger of God. Here she is entrusting herself to this man to lead her and her newborn baby and God into Egypt to protect them, to provide for them until they get back to Israel. This is what the Holy Family looked like, even though we get so many, ah gosh, there's so many variations of how men and how women should act today.

10:41 And when we have these variations, when the world tells men how they need to act or the world tells women how they need to act, we always have backlash. For example, just think, I mean, think about kind of recent years in our culture. There's the rise of this phrase toxic masculinity when it comes to men. And so you have the rise of the Me Too movement, okay? It's why you have this, because there is something in men that wants to dominate, right? There's something in men that wants to use. It's called original sin. There's something in us that... that wants to use and dominate.

11:17 But what happened was, in our culture, men were told, especially young men were told, that everything that makes them distinctive needs to be shut down. Everything that makes them men needs to be suppressed. Not just the part that wants to use, promise to nominate. Of course, Christians would say that forever. But the culture says, no, everything that makes you uniquely masculine needs to be shut down. And of course, not everyone's saying this, but that's by and large the message of the culture. And we realize this, there's been a backlash now. And you might not know this, but there's been a growing trend among young men to embrace the angry, thug, philanderer persona. Like the idea is like, hey, you keep telling me that I need to be quiet. I don't have anything to offer. So that's great. I'm not going to offer you anything.

12:05 The same thing is true for women. I mean, at the same time, it's so funny. At the same time, men have been told they need to be less masculine. Women have been told they need to be more masculine, be more like the boys. Then you need to be just as aggressive as the guys are. You need to be just as hyper-independent as the guys are. You need to be either objectifying or self-objectifying as the guys do. And the reaction to that, right, is that like the trad wife, kind of like this movement of like, what is happening there? And we realize this, all of those are parodies of actual real masculinity or real femininity. There's this doctor, Dr. Leonard Sachs. I mentioned it before. He had a book called Boys Adrift. And in the book, he describes, he says, our culture presently only offers young men, boys, two options. One is the brute, right? You're strong, dominate. You have power.

12:56 What you need to do is use that power to manipulate, to dominate, to assert yourself. You're the brute. You're the bully. The other is what he would term the slacker dude. Like, yeah, you have the strength, but just like, you don't want to be a brute, so be the guy who's like, hey man, whatever, I'm fine with all of it. For the women, what women are being offered is either sexualize yourself, hyper-sexualize yourself, just like the brute would be hyper-violent, or erase yourself and shrink back and be less than who you're called to be. Sachs says there is something, something both men and women are called to that's greater than this. And it's not the trad wife, not the trad family, not the family from the 1950s. We have to go back further than that. It's actually the holy family, which is not a caricature of masculinity or femininity, but the characteristics of masculinity and femininity.

13:49 So what's the characteristics of a truly masculine man? It's not the brute who takes his strength and uses it for himself. It's not the slacker dude who takes his strength and dissipates it. It's the Joseph. It's Jesus, the person who puts his strength and maximizes his strength in order to serve the people around him. If you see this all throughout scripture, we see it in the gospel today. Once again, we have Joseph who's doing what? He's using his strength to take care of his wife and his child. We see Jesus doing this. Jesus takes his strength. What's he do? He washes feet of his disciples. Here's Jesus, uses his strength and defends the woman caught in adultery. Jesus defies the expectations of religious leaders and he heals on a Sabbath. Because why? Because there's someone sick in front of him on a Sabbath. You have Jesus who praises the one who puts in two copper coins because he notices the small details that now she gave everything. So here's Jesus who is this incredible, and Joseph, incredible examples of masculinity.

14:48 Strength developed and put at the service of the people around him. And we have this, again, vision of what true femininity would look like. You have, again, once again, the courage and trust of Mary, who says, let it be done to me. I have no idea what's going to happen in the future, and I don't need to control it. I'm going to trust in God. That's true femininity. You have this fierce, how many times women in the Gospels and the women in all the Bible have this fierce fidelity? You have someone like Ruth, Book of Ruth, who is fiercely faithful to her mother-in-law, Naomi. You have the women at the foot of the cross, who everyone else leaves except for John, but these women are fiercely faithful to Jesus. There's the creative genius of Abigail. If you know the story of Abigail when it comes to David, David's on his way to kill Abigail's husband who's insulted him in a massive way.

15:42 Abigail takes the initiative and she goes out and she's able to convince David not to kill her husband who's kind of an idiot, but she is creative, industrious, and wise. Just like, do you want a great, great image of what biblical femininity looks like is Proverbs chapter 31. The Proverbs 31 woman is described not, as what, actually, the Hebrew term is this. She's called the eshet shayil, which means she's the woman of valor.

16:11 That she's trustworthy. She's strong, physically strong, spiritually strong, emotionally strong. She's industrious. She's creative. She's wise. She's generous. She's holy. Her husband praises her. to have a true view, a biblical view, of what it is to have a holy family, we first need to have a view of what it is to be a holy man and a holy woman, which are not the same, but are complementary.

16:47 At the same time, this is close to the last thing. We know this, both men and women, all of us are called to justice and we're called to humility and courage. We're called to purity. We're called to discipleship. We're called to prayer. We're all called to be saints, which is why I think that if you want to know, okay, how should I live? How should we live as a family? How should we live as individuals? Go back to the second reading today. I just want to read this to close from Colossians, where St. Paul just says, okay, this is, if you want to live that life, life like the Holy Family, a life of holiness. put on heartfelt compassion, put on kindness, put on humility, put on gentleness. Men and women, put on patience. Bear with one another and forgive one another.

17:42 Husbands and wives, he says, is saying, if someone has a grievance against another, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also do. And all of you, over all these, put on love. That's the bond of perfection. Let the peace of Christ control your hearts. The peace in which you were also called into one body.

18:04 Be thankful. Pause on that. Today, who is someone you love in your life right now? Be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. As in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, Sometimes you have to have hard conversations. But also, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. Also, you get to have joyful celebration. Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

18:41 And then Paul says very clearly, Wives, be subordinate to your husbands. Trust them. Husbands, love your wives. Provide, protect, and care for them. Live in such a way that she can trust you.

19:03 Children, obey your parents and everything, for that's pleasing to the Lord. And then fathers, don't provoke your children so they may not become discouraged. Here is this incredible, incredible guidance from the Lord. and it's guidance we can put into practice right now so that your family and my family