​In 1964 St Pope Paul VI visited Nazareth, the town where the Annunciation happened. It was also the home town of the Holy Family where Jesus lived his childhood and young adulthood. In his homily the saintly Pope said: ‘The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus – the school of the Gospel… How gladly would I become a child again, and go to school once more in this humble and sublime school of Nazareth.’
Sisters and Brothers! On this Sunday of the Holy Family we are taken to this school which was also the home of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. However this Sunday we find them not in their own home in Nazareth but in a much bigger building: the Jerusalem Temple. Still it was their home because the Jerusalem Temple was the dwelling place on earth for the Almighty God, the Father of the Child Jesus whom they presented there. However they were not dropping off the child for a weekend or so. The Jerusalem Temple was their home too as they were the descendants of Abraham and thus the people of God. Mary and Joseph, like all Jews, were the fulfilment of the promise which God gave to Abram as we could hear in our First Reading from the Book of Genesis. God said to the old and childless Patriarch: ‘Look up to heaven and count the stars if you can. Such will be your descendants.’ Mary and Joseph, and Jesus too, were among those stars Abram saw that night.
The old man may have been stunned at this promise but he ‘put his faith in the Lord.’ That’s why his name was changed. We met him as Abram which means the Noble Father. He was noble indeed in believing in God’s promise despite him and his wife being in their eighties. But God made them wait a bit longer so that the birth of their child could not be explained in any other way than by God’s intervention. The last three verses of today’s reading tell us about the conception and birth of their son Isaac some years later. Abram was 99 when his son was conceived. God gave him also a new name: Abraham which means The Father of Many Nations. Similarly the name of his wife Sarai meaning My Princess was changed to Sarah meaning The Mother of Many Nations. That’s why the Jewish people believed, and still believe, that they were more than a nation, they were a family. It wasn’t a perfect family but it was a holy family because the Holy One, God, lived in their midst. In them God was recreating his great plan for all men and women, his sons and daughters.
The Bible tells us that at the beginning God created man and woman. Not just two genders but a marriage which can continue God’s creation by giving birth to their children and thus becoming a family. I believe that as Christians we need to reclaim faith in this miracle that when God created man and woman he also created marriage and family. When the descendants of Adam and Eve got corrupted and ended up in their destruction in the waters of the Great Flood God saved the future of the humankind not in a few ideal individuals but in the family of Noah.
            When the fullness of time came and Mary, who was engaged to Joseph, conceived the Son of God their future marriage was on the brink of a breakdown as we read in the Gospel of Matthew. Joseph wanted to send her away. However God was fighting to save the marriage of Mary and Joseph. Their marriage was necessary so that Jesus could have a family and so that the family of Nazareth, which we call the Holy Family, could grow into One, Holy and Catholic Church. We are not an organisation. We are not an institution. We are a family. That’s why we are brothers and sisters calling God our Father, calling Jesus our Brother, calling Mary our Mother, calling also the Church our Mother.
            The Holy Family Sunday occurs only once a year but what Saint Paul VI said in Nazareth in 1964 is a prophetic urging for all of us. The Holy Family reminds us that as Christians we are a family. The Holy Family also reminds us that our families, built on the marriage of man and woman, are as necessary for the Church as the priesthood is. In fact the both sacraments: the Priesthood and the Holy Matrimony are called the sacraments of at the service of unity. Without them the Church will fall apart.

​‘Do not be afraid. Listen, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the Town of David a saviour has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’ It is not a typical invitation to a birthday party, isn’t it?  But it is an invitation which brings us to our churches every year for Christmas celebration. It is not a typical invitation. The Good News which we hear today makes the Nativity Scene expand to include us like it included the shepherds who heard the Good News at the very first Christmas and found themselves at the manger.
            Sisters and Brothers! How would you describe grace? If you asked me I would tell you of a little girl I met in our parish school a couple of weeks ago who introduced herself saying: I am Grace. There was something special about her which still stays with me so that when I hear the word grace the beautiful face of that girl comes to my mind. Christian people have had a similar experience when it comes to salvation. Salvation for Christians is not a theory or a definition. For Christian people Salvation has a face. For Christian people Salvation has hands and feet. For Christian people Salvation has a great heart. It is the face, hands, feet and the great heart of Jesus Christ whose birth gathers us today. His very name, JESUS, means GOD SAVES. During those years of the Lord’s childhood every time Mary and their neighbours were calling him by his name they were announcing that God saves.
            These days when we experience so much uncertainty of our new Covid normal, which appears so fragile, as the recent development in NSW showed us, we may ask ourselves: What does it mean to us at 2020 Christmas that God saves us? A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, a cloistered Carmelite nun gave me a little statue of the Baby Jesus sleeping on the cross. This year when I looked at it I couldn’t help thinking that the suffering humanity is the cross on which Jesus is born for us and for our salvation today.
            In September one of our Oblate seminarians in Poland volunteered to work in a hospital where people who suffer from Covid-19 are treated. He has been there ever since. As you can understand he is not able to socialise with his Oblate community or his family. With permission of his Oblate superior he gave up on being paid for his work. When people ask him why he is still there, in this dangerous situation, and with no payment, his answer is: ‘If you want to understand me first I need you tell you about Jesus.’
            Let me tell you something about Jesus too. If we wanted to put candles on his birthday cake we would have 2020 candles. All those candles would remind us of his humanity, of his life as a son of Mary. However when we think of his Divinity, of his life as the Son of God the Father, we need to abandon the idea of putting candles on his birthday cake. As the son of God he is eternal, ‘Born before ages,’ as we profess in the Creed. We would like to be eternal, wouldn’t we? Not to need to face death and suffering is an enticing thought, isn’t it? Why then Jesus would choose to be mortal, a subject to death and suffering? The answer to this question seats on your right and left, in front of you and behind you as well. When you go home after this Mass, look into the mirror, there you will find the answer to this question too. Let it sink deep into your soul. Savour it.
I presume you will have a Christmas lunch with your family. Please accept the Good News of the Salvation, which has the face of the New Born Jesus, as food for your life journey.  This Good News will not only sustain you through these difficult times but it will transform you like it did transform that seminarian I told you about.
‘Do not be afraid. Listen, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the Town of David a saviour has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’

​            You may have watched the movie Alien. It is pretty scary. The movie was advertised with a trailer in which it was written: In space no one can hear you scream. It was a catchy phrase which referred to what scientists discovered that if there is vacuum sound waves cannot travel.
Sisters and Brothers! We are here not as scientists but as people of faith. A parishioner of ours, whom we have buried recently, in her final years when speaking about her approaching death, kept saying: I will go when God calls me to himself. Her belief captures what people of faith treasure. We don’t live in a vacuum. We live in the world which is filled with the presence of God. He speaks to us constantly even if we don’t get what he says. Does it sound strange? Have a chat to a mother who talks to a newborn baby then. Is it weird what she does? After all, the child doesn’t understand her words. But it is not weird at all. She is not lecturing the baby; she is communicating her love and care for the child. It is what God does for us. What would be a point of knowing all the secrets of the Universe without knowing that we are loved? We are loved indeed by God. That’s the greatest discovery anyone can make. It will not get you the Noble Prize but it will make you say after the Prophet Isaiah: ‘I exult for joy in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God.’ We say that because as St Paul wrote in the Bible: nothing and no one EVER ‘will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
That was the Good News which John the Baptist announced. In the Gospel reading we heard that ‘He came as a witness, as a witness to speak for the light.’ The light John came to speak for is Jesus Christ. In him you will discover how much God loves you.
God in his goodness has given to this beautiful planet of ours, which we call Earth, which we call our home, the Sun. Once the Sun dies our Earth will die too. The light coming from the Sun sustains and nurtures all life on Earth. God in his goodness has given to us his Son Jesus Christ who died out of love for us. When he died even the Sun grew dark. Not out of sorrow for the crucified God but because the light of Divine Love emanating from the Cross made the light of the Sun bleak. The Sun will expire at some stage but God’s love made visible in Jesus Christ will never expire. God will always speak to us like a mother speaks to her baby. Not to reason or lecture but to communicate love.
Isaiah, as we could hear in our First Reading, said of himself: ‘The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor.’ Isaiah was convinced that he had a mission because God told him to do so. When centuries later the Son of God, Jesus Christ, stood up in the Synagogue of his hometown of Nazareth he read the same words and he applied them to himself. Was Jesus lacking originality by copying words of an ancient prophet? Not at all. He took upon himself that mission of which Isaiah spoke because the mission wasn’t finished yet. There were, and there are still, people who live in darkness because they don’t know that they are loved by God. The poorest of the poor is the person who lives without enjoying God’s love.
Jesus came not only to tell them about that but to love them in their darkness. St Eugene de Mazenod with who we live this Advent season, at the very beginning of his ministry as a priest, chose the words: ‘He has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor’ as his motto. When he founded a community of Missionaries he gave them this motto too. When he became a bishop the words appeared on his Coat of Arms. ‘He has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor’ doesn’t simply identify the aim of the ministry but reveals that God has spoken and that those who have heard it, like Isaiah, John the Baptist, St Eugene or you and me, want to give their voice, their whole life so that people living in darkness of unbelief could find light.
We have just buried a fellow Catholic who did it splendidly. We now pray for more people who will let others know that we live in the Space which isn’t silent but filled with God who while gazing upon us keeps saying: I love you.

​            When Jewish people celebrate their Passover meal, which is the climax of their year, they fill up one cup with wine and leave it unattached. This is the cup of the Prophet Elijah. They not only long for his return but they are convinced that he will return. Hence the cup is there for him. What was so special about Elijah that he is still remembered with such great fondness? Elijah was very good at connecting people with God. He was very good at announcing God’s saving work among his people. Finally Elijah was to introduce the promised Messiah to the people of God.
            Sisters and Brothers! As Christians we don’t keep a cup for Elijah because John the Baptist stepped into that mission of introducing the promised Messiah to the people of God. It was John the Baptist who cried out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make his paths straight!’ Did he mean roadworks? If it were the case one could think that those who work on the Monash Freeway took it seriously, because they keep upgrading it all the time. It never ends. If we can take something from their example it is that our preparing the way for the Lord never ends either. We will never say that we can retire from helping people to embrace Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, as their Lord and Saviour as well. If the way between them and Jesus is full of obstacles we have our duty to remove them, like John the Baptist, Elijah or Isaiah did. If the way between Jesus and them looks like an endless detour our duty is to find a shortcut like John the Baptist, Elijah or Isaiah did.
            St. Eugene de Mazenod was a person who did it wholeheartedly. Yes, he was a priest and missionary who never stopped searching for the ways to connect God with people, particularly those who were far away from God. When he was a bishop in Marseilles he was available to all. In his waiting room one could see top civil officials, the local aristocracy, prominent businessmen and women but also fish sellers from the Marseilles Port, orphans and the homeless. In the waiting room of the Bishop of Marseilles everyone was equal. Bishop Eugene however wasn’t satisfied with being available to people coming to see him. If you visited Marseilles during his time most likely you would meet him walking through the slums to give the last rites to a dying woman who had no one to look after her. You will see his Lordship at the fish market talking to everyone who wanted to talk to him. But Eugene wasn’t born with a Bible in his hand and a mitre on his head. For twenty seven years he was a layman and as a layman he realised his call of ‘preparing the way for the Lord.’ In his mid-twenties while on a business trip from Paris to his home town of Aix in the Southern France he met a young man he was travelling to join the army. The young officer was however worried that he could lose his faith in such a hostile environment. Eugene offered his friendship to him to support him. He remained faithful to that friendship until the death of that man many years later. The officer remained faithful to Christ until his death.
            I think that each one of us should have a cup full of wine at home. Not for Elijah but as a reminder that we are Advent men or Advent women, like St Eugene de Mazenod was. Such people are happily convinced that in the midst of various duties and responsibilities they can connect people with Jesus, that they can ‘prepare the way for the Lord.’