Today is the feast of the Holy Family. You know, we’ve all heard 
about dysfunctional families. In fact, I’m sure we all know what a 
“dysfunctional family” means. We probably know because, by one 
definition or another, we ourselves have all grown up in 
dysfunctional families. So I have good news for you. The good news is 
the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, had their dysfunctional 
moments. The good news is they were like us and we are called to be 
like them. You know, for a dysfunctional moment, just listen to 
today’s gospel. The parents are beside themselves when the teenage 
son goes AWOL for three days. And then they are saying “I thought he 
was with you.... I thought he was with you.... I thought he was with 
the relatives....” back and forth that way. And then when they find 
him, he says “What’s the big deal? What are you worried about? What’s 
going on?” And in today’s parlance, I think what they said was, “Get 
in the car and we will talk about it later.” And obviously, they did 
because the gospel said, “He went down and, from then on, he obeyed 
them.”

Perhaps the same thing can be said about our human family because our 
human family has the love of God embracing it, from the beginning. 
Our human family has the arrival of Jesus, and his death and 
resurrection, his teaching, and our human family is still 
dysfunctional. As we enter the new year, 2007, I think there are some 
questions that we need to ask. Where are we going? How are we doing? 
And where have we been?

Where are we going? We are going toward being a holy family. We’re 
made in the image of God and we are called to be a people who 
transform the world through justice, through love, and through peace. 
That’s where we are going.

How are we doing? I don’t think we are doing too well. You just have 
to follow the news. The rate of domestic violence went up this year 
in our country. The rate of street crime went up this year. Then 
there’s Iraq. As Pope John Paul II said before he died, he condemned 
the invasion and he said that it was an adventure that would have no 
return. And it’s beginning to feel that way. And besides that, our 
world, planet, is haunted still with starvation and still with 
genocide. How are we doing? Not so well.

I like the last question, “Where have we been?” because the power of 
Jesus and the influence of Jesus doesn’t work like instant tea and 
instant coffee. It doesn’t work like working with a microwave. 
Rather, it is like a time capsule. Even the people who have loved 
Jesus, the saints who have tried to follow Jesus, I mean it has taken 
us almost two thousand years to figure out and be clear on it, that 
slavery is wrong, to figure out and be clear on it that torture is 
wrong, to figure out and underline that war has got to be just if we 
are at war at all, to figure out that, for believers, there is no 
place for capital punishment. We’re slow. We’re slow. It rather takes 
time to simmer, takes time to digest. It takes time to flavor the 
world and change the world with the teaching of Jesus.

Ten years ago this month, Carl Sagan died, the astronomer, the 
educator. He was once described as the “most  visible member of the 
scientific community on the Planet Earth.” Over four and a half 
billion people have seen his TV series, “Cosmos, a Tour of the 
Universe.” Along the way, if you want to ask the question “Where have 
we been,” he did an interesting experiment. He took the fifteen 
billion years history of our universe, give or take a billion years, 
and crammed it into one calendar year and said, “ This is what it 
would look like.” And it’s worth looking at because it gives us a 
sense of balance. It gives us a sense of proportion, and I think it 
gives us hope. According to his calendar, in the first milliseconds 
after midnight, on Jan. 1, there is the Big Bang or what believers 
call “God’s flaring forth.” And look how long it takes for the next 
thing to happen, the origin of our neighborhood, Milky Way, all the 
way to May first. That represents, at the very least, ten billion 
years. And then how long does it take, we’re into September, way into 
the year, before we reach the origin of our own solar system. And 
then, finally, on September 14th, the formation of our home of the 
Planet Earth. How about some life on earth? September 21st. Looking 
forward to life, it turns out to be the first cells, not people 
walking around. It’s October second that we finally get our first 
neighbors on the planet, ...worms! And then, October 17th, the first 
fish. Then December 23rd, and it’s nice to make it in time for 
Christmas, for the first time, reptiles and trees, so we could have 
something like a Christmas tree. December 24th, the first dinosaurs. 
December 26th, the first mammals. December 27th, the first birds. And 
we are at the end of the year, December 31st, before our relatives  
arrive, the first human beings. The first humans are late in the day, 
10:30 in the evening. Fire is discovered at 11:46 and this is roughly 
eighteen thousand years ago, the first earliest cave paintings come 
at 11:59, just before midnight. That leaves us very little time for 
recorded history, just the last minute. Fifty seconds to midnight is 
Egypt and the finding of astronomy. Fifty-one seconds to midnight is 
the first alphabet. Fifty-six seconds to midnight is the Roman Empire 
and the arrival of Jesus Christ. I like this part because we’re 
contemporaries of Jesus when you look at the whole history. Fifty-
nine seconds to midnight and comes Columbus and the Renaissance. 
We’ve only just begun. We’ve only just begun...

No wonder we’re dysfunctional on this Planet Earth. No wonder. We 
have to still digest the message of Jesus. We still have to change 
our ways, and we are doing it really as contemporaries of Jesus 
Christ. Each generation hints that the human family is just getting 
started. The birth of each baby hints to us that the human family is 
just getting started. The beginning of each new year that we 
celebrate this evening hints that we are just getting started. We’ve 
only just begun to get the hang of what it is to be a human being. 
We’ve only just begun to get the hang of what it is to be a healthy 
human family. We’ve only just begun to figure out how we have to 
treat our world and each other. We are born holy, each one of us, 
because we come from the hand of God. We begin this new year holy 
because we come from the hand of God. Teilhard  du Chardin, the 
Jesuit scientist and mystic died in 1955. He caught a glimpse of the 
meaning and the message and the mystery of our lives. He said, “Some 
day, after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides and gravity we 
shall harness for God the energies of love. And then for the second 
time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.

The Holy Family had its dysfunctional moments, but the Holy Family is 
not just a footnote in history. The Holy Family is our future. We are 
holy because we come from the hand of God and whatever the future 
holds, we know who holds the future.... Whatever the future holds, we 
know who holds the future. It is our God. Let us give thanks to the Lord
who is so good. Happy New Year!