Legendary

A homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, December 31, 2023

Sir 3:2-6, 12-14, Col 3:12-17, Lk 2:22-40

I am the oldest of the six sons of William J. Zapcic MD and Julia M. McCosker Zapcic RN, who, as family legend tells it, met in an operating room during a Caesarian section. 

The first four of us arrived in brisk sequence; we all know the impolite term for siblings close in age. And all six of us are unique individuals, united by ancestry and gene pool more than by shared interests. Nonetheless, our love runs deep.

We were a normal family growing up — whatever “normal” means — though we were far from typical. “My Three Sons” times two, plus one, with Dad’s brother living with us as our de facto big brother through his high school and college years. “Seven boys but six sons,” as Dad would say, all squeezed between our parents in the pew at St. Leo the Great Church every Sunday for the 8 o’clock Mass, with Dad on the aisle to block any potential escapees.

Being atypical — Dad a local celebrity, Mom the continual recipient of faux pity (“Six boys? Oh, your poor mother!”) — we had countless adventures that generated more of those family legends. 

We spent hours in a succession of Country Squire station wagons, many of them painted Our Lady’s blue. We tussled between the parked car’s front and back seats in the physicians’ lot at Riverview Hospital while waiting for Dad to make his rounds. We argued over who would ride in the way-way-back with our black Lab on trips to Flatbrookville, the huffing-and-puffing car’s roof rack laden with luggage and a week’s provisions.

(To this day, I yearn for my car to have a roof rack, though I have absolutely zero need for one.)

Every family gathering in our adult lives, with spouses and friends and children and grandchildren, includes a “Remember when?” or “Can you believe we…?” session, when myriad stories — yes, family legends — are told and retold and embellished, when each of us remembers or misremembers or fabricates details that none of the rest of us recall. 

When merely the sight of The Doctor and his atypical family invited stares, the tales flourished among ourselves and our companions. These tales forever will be told.

Another family, a Holy Family, is legendary, a model for all of us, but we’re somewhat short on some of their legends. Alas.

The scriptural history of Jesus’s life is, at best, hazy and incomplete between his first couple of years on Earth and his ministry around age 30. 

So how, then, must life have been for Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, the little town in Galilee where nothing good ever came from, as Scripture says?

I’m sure they tried for normal, but that really wasn’t an option.

Their newborn son was trumpeted by angels and worshipped by royalty and sages and the lowly alike. His mere existence enraged a petty tyrant who called himself King Herod and who had young children slaughtered. 

When Mary and Joseph presented baby Jesus in the temple, the deeply spiritual Simeon declared that his own life’s mission was complete, because he had met the Savior of the world.

Years later, on a different trip to the temple with a caravan of family and friends, a tween-age Jesus stayed behind to interpret the Scriptures among the scholars, scaring the sandals off his earthly parents and confounding them with his statement about doing his Father’s work. That Law-and-Prophets stuff Jesus was doing didn’t look much like Joseph’s carpentry.

Not. Normal.

But typical, all in all.

Growing up, Jesus played by the rules, learning everything a good son of Abraham and of David should know about The Chosen People and their relationship with God. Jesus learned everything a good son of Joseph should know about working with his hands.

Jesus ate and drank and laughed and hauled water from the well and got his hands and feet dirty. He came when his mother and father called him (though probably not always as quickly as they would have liked; teenagers, right?).

He loved his human family of mother, foster father and other kin, even as his divine nature compelled him as an itinerant preacher to expand the size and scope of his chosen family to include every man, woman and child alive, who ever lived, and who ever would live.

And by doing so, Jesus redefined family.

And by doing so, Jesus challenges us to redefine family.

Jesus challenges us to expand our families, as he did, to include every man, woman and child alive, who ever lived, and who ever will live. 

To wrap our living relatives — because we indeed are all linked genetically — to wrap them in peace, justice and charity. All so desperately needed.

To pray for those who came before us.

To care for the Earth that belongs to those who will come after us.

To live simply, so others may simply live.

To love God, and love our neighbors as ourselves.

To include anyone and everyone in the family legends we continue to forge.

Station wagons optional.