It’s the feast of the Holy Family and it’s not my favorite feast.  In  
fact, I’m always grouchy at the feast of the Holy Family.  When I  
grew up in Manhattan, we had a great pastor with a thick Irish  
brogue.  I love the brogue, I think it’s lyrical, but I didn’t like  
him and I didn’t like his brogue because he always had the feast of  
the Holy Family, in the parish in New York where I grew up.

“Oh, my dear beloved mother, I can see her now cooking and cooking  
and loving and loving, keeping us all together.”  Now, I was in the  
fifth grade and my mother was dead, and I would say, “Oh not again.”  
“And my father working 3 jobs to keep us all together, not ever a  
meal missing.” And my father was home drunk, and I sat there  
growling, muttering, disliking him, disliking the Holy Family, and  
disliking the whole thing.

Now, in today’s gospel it says that Mary and Joseph did not  
understand, and I didn’t.  I was a mean little 5th grade kid and I  
didn’t understand.  You and I both have people we love and care about  
who were not with us at Christmas, and they are not with us here and  
we don’t understand.  They’re not with us anymore in the faith;  
they’re not here in Church. We don’t understand any more than Mary  
and Joseph did.

So, I want to keep that as our refrain, and our second refrain would  
be, “What would the Master say?”  I hope you don’t think that’s a  
cliché.  I did at first, but I love that phrase now.  When we don’t  
understand something, what would the Master, Jesus, say?

Here are three cases:  I don’t understand, they’re not with you at  
Mass, and they weren’t at Christmas.  Let’s take a look at them and  
try to understand a little bit.  And then, what would our Lord say  
about them?

The first is the college sophomore.  As you have heard me say a  
zillion times I taught college and high school for 30 years and it  
was usually in sophomore year that the college student would announce  
to his parents at Christmas, “I am not, repeat, not going to Church.  
I’ve had it up to here with religion and church and Mass.  I am now a  
cool college agnostic.  Everything is superstitious, everything is  
for children, everything is opium for the people.”  They love to  
quote Marx and things like that.  “I’m too cool for such childish  
things.”  I know they don’t talk quite that simplistically, but I  
think you understand the general cool, “I’m above this all” attitude  
usually by sophomore year.  And the parents, “We don’t understand.  
We spent all that money on Catholic education, 8 years of grammar  
school, high school cost a fortune, and Catholic college.”  They come  
home after one year in college, “We’ve grown up; we’re beyond that  
childishness.”  It hurts the parents.

Can I tell you my one claim to fame, as I was in the job for so long?  
They do come back, they come back in time if you continue to indicate  
you like going to Mass, not love – that’s kind of perfunctory – that  
you still like going to Mass, that you speak about it with a certain  
zest and enthusiasm.  Over all these years that’s what the kid will  
remember, not being dragooned to go because you’re a Catholic and  
you’re going to Mass.  At least that’s my opinion.

Another thing that works with these cool college sophomores is I  
would make up a list of Nobel Prize winning scientists and I would  
hold them up in front of them.  “You’re going to dismiss all of these  
guys as poop heads, great, brilliant, intellectual scientists,  
physicists, biologists who were converts to the Catholic Church in  
our own century?  And by the way, those books you love so much, The  
Chronicles of Narnia, the Lord of the Rings written by deeply  
convinced Oxford professor Christians.

What would the Master say?  I don’t know.  Your guess is a good as  
mine.  Our Lord had words for everything, but I think our Lord would  
say, “Unless you become like little children, you can’t get into the  
Kingdom of God.”  He didn’t mean little children in any other way  
except wonder, a sense of wonder, really intelligence that accepts  
that some things are mysterious.  Some things are too wonderful to  
understand.

The second group of people who aren’t with us:  They’re addicts,  
they’re home addicted, they’re hammered, and they’ve got hangovers.  
“Leave me alone, I’ll see you when you get back.  Have some black  
coffee for me.”  I used to get so mad about that in my own home life,  
furious.  But I’m still mad at God.  I break a pencil point, I’m  
furious.  The cosmos is against me.  Why are you fighting me?  I’m  
trying to write a good letter.  But as a 5 or 7-year-old kid, always  
mad at God.  I can’t understand, I can’t understand.

I came across a phrase recently.  “No theologian has ever been able  
to accept a toothache theologically.”  Isn’t that great?” or a  
philosopher – “No philosopher has ever been able to accept a  
toothache philosophically.”  I became one of those teachers who  
always wanted to explain that there were the great mystic scholars  
and the great saints, the problem of evil, the problem of suffering,  
forgetting the fact that when I was a kid I would knock on the  
rectory door and I would ask for Father Kelly.  I was looking for  
rent money, my father was out of it, and we needed rent money.  I  
would say, “Is Father Kelly here?” because in those days the Catholic  
parish really was a second home.  You would go there for the rent and  
the nuns used to give my brother and me lunch.  And there was a  
British priest visiting – a professor of philosophy at Oxford, a  
British Jesuit.  He had such a skinny neck.  His little neck used to  
come out of a whole lagoon of black collar.  I remember his Adam’s  
apple had little hairs coming out of it.  He would visit every  
Christmas and feast of the Holy Family.  And I would knock on the  
door and say, “Can I see Father Kelly?”  “Are you the student  
studying to be a priest?”  I said, “yes, is Father Kelly here?”  “I  
hope you’ll sit down, Michael, and let us talk about the regenerative  
effect of redemptive suffering.”  He was such a sweet guy.  His name  
was Martin Darcy and he was a very famous Jesuit, very sweet, very  
skinny, very out of it.  I just wanted the rent money.  I didn’t  
understand that what he was trying to do was to give me a theological  
approach to such misery.

What would the Master say?  The Master today would say if he were  
there sitting with you, I think he would say, “God bless the Saint  
Vincent de Paul Society that helps people get a meal and pays the  
rent. God bless the 12 Step Program.”  It might have saved my old  
man.  “No philosopher has ever been able to accept a toothache  
philosophically.”  Help him with the dentist and then we can talk  
about the regenerative power of suffering.

And finally, what I don’t understand is the communal confessions we  
had here about a week ago as we always do before Christmas.  There  
were about 14 priests scattered through the Church – average age  
102.  Now, you’ve often heard me complain about the fact that when I  
was ordained in 1960 there were 28 of us guys ordained.  By the end  
of 1970 14 had left – half of them were gone.  I’m talking about 1960  
– in that era we were all very idealistic, we weren’t wishy-washy  
liberals or mad conservatives.  They were good guys and they worked  
in the hardest, toughest slums of New York for a decade.  And then  
they met a woman, and they fell in love and they left after 10 hard  
years to get married and to have kids.

I still hear from these guys.  Thirteen got married; one is gay and  
lives alone in Santa Monica.  But I still hear from a lot of these  
guys.  They would come back tomorrow to help.  They’re as old as I  
am, but they could help say Mass, they would be glad to hear  
confessions.  Many of them said they wouldn’t even expect a stipend  
(small as it is).  They would do it because they have the same good  
hearts they had when they were young guys who wanted to serve the  
Church as priests, but they made the “mistake” of falling in love,  
often with the very poor people with whom they worked.

Pope Paul VI, who was basically a rather sensitive and gentle guy,  
but in 1968 said, “The priests who have left the priesthood can be  
compared to Judas Iscariot.”  Ouch!  Anyhow, I wish these guys were  
back.  They are perfectly willing to come back – the same good  
hearts, the same good heads, but they got married.

What would the Master say?  When our Lord called the first priests,  
the apostles, he said, “Come follow me.  Oh, your name is Peter?  
You’re married?  I don’t think so.  You stay with the fish.”  He  
didn’t make an exception to Peter who was a married man.  Anyhow, I’m  
sure I’ll be reported to the Vatican and you won’t see me again.  The  
Master, I am sure, would say, “Welcome back.  We need you.”

In any event, my final note, just a personal parenthesis, when I was  
hearing confessions with the other elderly chaps, so many of the  
people who come to communal confession to me say things like, “Take  
care” or “Hang in there.”  I remember thinking if anyone says to me,  
“You’re looking chipper” I will screech.

Let’s you and I think in silence for a minute of anybody that you  
love (I have somebody) who hasn’t been with us for Mass in a long  
time, “What would the Master say?” and say a prayer for that person  
with great confidence in His power.