Before Yunan Frédéric delivers his Sunday homily each week, he stands where he will preach and faces the empty pews. “I start preaching with a loud voice alone in the church,” he says. “I preach to a community which is not here. By daring to do that, I’m discovering what I’m saying. I’m not thinking [about] it so much; I’m letting it come out, taking shape, letting the words become enfleshed through the words.”
Yunan Frédéric, a French-born Syriac Catholic priest, lives in Bethlehem with his Latina-American wife and three children. He has lived in the Middle East for 20 years; first in Syria, then in Jerusalem where he lived for 15 years. For the past two years, he has been the pastor to the Syriac Catholic community in Bethlehem; a small, largely refugee, Arab-speaking community comprising about 100 people.
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On this week’s “Preach,” Yunan delivers a homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Despite the Syriac Church not observing the Feast of the Holy Family in its liturgy, Yunan graciously agreed to preach on the podcast, as a father and a pastor in the very city where Jesus was born, in a place currently at war.
The Feast of the Holy Family reminds us that “a family is a sacred place,” Yunan says in his homily. But, the prevailing concept of the family in 1921 when the feast was instituted by Pope Benedict XV “was not only restricted to the parents and their children, it was including relatives and uncles, aunts, and cousins, as well as all the people who are living together in the same house,” he says. Drawing on a yet more ancient understanding from the Bible, Yunan adds that when Abraham “started worshiping the one and unique God, his entire family became faithful believers with him.”
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In the post-homily conversation with host Ricardo da Silva S.J., Yunan shares his approach to preaching. “It’s like walking with a friend and talking together;” he says, “I am very much listening as well. I am looking at the faces of the people. I’m trying to create a communion as we are one body during the Mass, and the homily is part of that communion.” As the conversation draws to an end, Yunan shares a prayer he has spontaneously found himself praying since war broke out, “O God, forgive us.”
“When I was saying ‘us,’ I was including everyone. I was putting myself with the one who kills, and I was taking the one who killed into myself as well, as one family was human, one human family. God forgive us.”
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I start preaching with a high voice alone in the church,” Yunan says. “I preach to a community which is not here. By daring to do that, I’m discovering what I’m saying.
Scripture Readings for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
First Reading: Gn 15:1-6; 21:1-3
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 105:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
Second Reading: Col 3:12-17
Gospel: Lk 21:2:22-40
You can find the full text of the readings here.
Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph by Yunan Frédéric
Today is the feast of the Holy Family. In the Gospel, we can see Joseph and Mary carrying the child Jesus, going to the temple according to Jewish tradition; and there they meet with Simeon, to whom God revealed that he will not die before seeing the Messiah. We can picture Joseph, Mary, and Jesus entering the temple in a spirit of prayer and sanctity.
On this day of the feast of the Holy Family, through meditating on this scene, the Church is reminding us that family is a sacred place of sanctity. The Church reminds us that sanctity is not reserved for a specific state of life, a religious life, an ascetic life when one must withdraw away from the world to find God. The family is, as well, a sacred place of sanctity.
St. Paul, through his various letters, is constantly reminding the faithful of their sanctity, encouraging each one of them to embrace this reality, the reality of welcoming Christ in us and being sanctified by our communion with Him. We have this famous passage in the first letter to the Corinthians when he says that, “Each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them.” And when he advises the faithful to be “all as he was,” meaning to remain in the state of celibacy, we have to put back those words in the context of Paul at that time being convinced that Christ will come back very soon.
The Church reminds us that sanctity is not reserved for a specific state of life,
Therefore, there was no time to build a family in such a situation. But the main point is not this one. I think that the main point is the fact that each one of us is called to be a saint as St. Paul says: “Each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.” As well, it is written in the Gospel of John: “My Father’s house has many rooms”.
Yes, each one of us is called to be a saint as being a saint is not to be an exceptional person, it is not reserved for a specific elite, but this is the gift of God given by God to all. In that regard, we need to resist the temptation of thinking that sanctity is unreachable and only the ones with a special destiny manage to reach the summit of the mountain.
Very often, indeed, when we think of the saints, we see them that way; and then we look at ourselves thinking that sanctity is not for us as we have nothing exceptional, but we are just simple human beings. But we are all called to be saints, as we are all loved by God. And sanctity starts with our family as the family is the first church. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus praying in the temple are like an icon of this sanctity present in us; as Christ is here in our lives.
By remaining open, we somehow extend our conception of what family is.
This feast of the Holy Family was instituted in 1921, as before that, the term family was not only restricted to the parents and their children. It was including relatives such as uncles, aunts, and cousins, as well as all the people who were living together in the same house. It is interesting today to meditate on that ancient conception of what the term family meant, as we often face a huge temptation: The temptation of closing in on ourselves to protect ourselves—to protect our family nucleus from any bad influences. The temptation of thinking that the outside world is a threat to our sanctity, and therefore the secular world, or the influence of the non-Christians or of the Christians who are different from us is perceived as negative for our life.
But Jesus asks us to not be afraid. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overthrow it. The light of Christ shining in us is to be shared. Sharing here is a keyword, a key to the door of love. Because the world is the very place where we share the love of God, where we share the Good News of love being stronger than darkness and death. To share it with the ones we love and the ones we have difficulty loving; to share it with our neighbors as well as with the strangers that we meet throughout our days; To share it with our friends as well as with our enemies. To love without conditions as God loves us.
Of course, God speaks to us in the world. We go into the world not only to give but also to receive; to witness God’s presence in our friends and neighbors, in the beauty of nature, indeed in all things. By remaining open, we somehow extend our conception of what family is. We find also in the story of Abraham the conception of a larger family. When he started worshiping the one and unique God, his entire family became faithful believers with him. At the beginning, the worshippers of a one and unique, creating God were from Abraham’s family. Then with Moses, it extended to a people composed of different tribes. Today in our reading of the Gospel, we have the figure of Simeon who, when he sees Jesus, says: “the salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples: A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of the people Israel.”
Yes, through the coming of Jesus Christ, God reveals his love for each human being. If we often talk about our chosen family, that is also because in light of our faith, our family is not limited to brothers and sisters, parents and children; in fact, Pope Francis chose the word fraternal, which is the language of family, to talk about how we should love everyone, whether it is migrants arriving or people of other faith. To live with Christ is to love with him the family he chose. And the family he chose is the entire humanity. The question is not “Does God love me and is he offering me his graces and gift to live a holy and sanctified life?” but “Am I open to receiving the gifts and graces that God is offering to each one of us, to share God’s light of life as well as to better discover who God is through the presence of the others?”.
The Holy family going to the temple reminds us that our very first church is our family. Our planet earth is our home. We are all children of God and each of us is called to be a saint. Yes, God loves each one of us in a beautiful and absolute way. In God there is no preferred child because each child of God is loved in a unique way.
