Genesis 1:26-28,31
Psalm 128:1-5
Ephesians 6:1-9
Luke 2:42-52

Remember that you and they have a Master in heaven who plays no favorite

Hugging:

The National Hugging Day website provides these quotes:

Most of us have a little person inside who needs human contact in this stainless steel, computerized society where we are kept at arms length.  Such personal contact makes you feel good.  A good hug warms relationships between people.  Part of the problem huggers face is this guarded age where hugs are easily misinterpreted and subject to a leering look or a lawsuit.  A hug has a universal meaning of support, concern or just a way of saying, “I’m here.” — Chris Thompson, Saginaw News

“We need to know we’re cared about… students need that.  Most of them hug me back-it’s our usual greeting.” Rev. James Stein, Premontre H.S., Green Bay, WI

“We encourage hugging.  We have grandparents who hug the children who sit on their laps, and our staff people rub the children’s backs at nap time to relax them.  Every day should be hugging day.” Mary Van Heuvel, Director, Green Bay Nursery Program

“Hugs make everyone feel good.  It’s a way to know that someone cares.  The need to be hugged doesn’t change when you get older.” Barbara Kuehn Schumacher, Mgr., Ft. Howard [Senior] Apartments, Green Bay

“Touch is life-giving, is healing.  Touching really helps human beings.  Talking doesn’t do a lot for someone who feels rotten, but touch helps alleviate the pain and anguish.  We don’t lose the need for touch when we stop being babies.  We basically need to be touched, although some people do not like to be touched and we have to respect that.  A 1950’s study of institutionalized children showed that even though the children received good physical care, good nutrition, were fed and changed regularly, they became sickly and psychotic years afterward.  They didn’t make it.  They were never picked up and held.  They suffered from a condition that results from the lack of tender, loving care.” Rev. Langdon K. Owen, Director, American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry in Green Bay

“For human beings, you need two hugs a day to survive, four hugs for maintenance, six hugs to grow.” Virginia Satir, a Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapist.

St. Paul, in Romans 16 says:

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

Jesus hug:

Do you think Mary and Joseph hugged Jesus when they found in in the Temple? Perhaps they did, out of joy, perhaps relief. Luke gives us the only account of Jesus’ youth. In the narrative Jesus is twelve, still a child according to Jewish Law. This glimpse into Jesus early life may illustrate many things, but most of all it illustrates that the love that existed in Jesus’ earthly family was a real and living love. If Mary and Joseph saw Jesus as anything but the son they loved, no part of the story would have meaning. They wouldn’t have bothered to look, to care, to embrace Him when they found Him.

What do we see:

When we look at each other, first as family, what do we see? Do we see those we wish to greet with a holy kiss, with a hug? Do we see those we wish to affirm in the love of Christ? Do we rush to love as Mary and Joseph rushed to find Jesus?

This process begins in our families. It is the place we learn love, and why our Holy Church celebrates this day. The family that practices tenderness, compassion, and love for each other is the family that stands together in good and bad, that support and encourages each other. When we go home today and look at our children, our spouses, our parents, do we see that person who longs for that hug that connection to family? They are there, plain to us, and we must make every effort to see beyond what we know to what we should know.

That effort then extends beyond the family, the place we learn, to our wider Christian family, the members of our Holy Polish National Catholic Church, and then the members of other Christian Churches. What is practiced at home must be lived in the world. What we know and have, what we take from our homes, takes action in daily life and in the way Christians ought to relate to each other and the world.

Seeing clearly:

Our experiences at home prepare us to see differently in the world, and how we see is essential to whether we can love as family.

Seeing clearly takes work, effort, and starts with the message of God which lives in our hearts. Sometimes it is a quiet whisper, other times a raging storm, but it calls us to be the love of Christ for each other, to affirm and heal each other in love.

Seeing clearly requires us to set aside what we think we see and to see with eyes of love. Our family experiences tell us that what may be outward is not necessarily a reflection of what is inside. If we see only the face, the facade, we miss what is inside.

Try this, pick a picture of any group of people and reflect on it. Look at the faces and the body language and think about what is being portrayed. Do we see friends or enemies, openness or agendas? We can construct a lot of scenarios from that picture, and from how our minds perceive it. Then step back, and look again, but with eyes that see only the love that is in each person and in us. Look at another person and think in terms of their capacity for love, the fact that they do indeed love. The picture is suddenly changed.

Our Christian family needs exactly this kind of love, this kind of seeing. It doesn’t have to be grandiose, but in every small and seemingly insignificant way, we need to consciously show those hugs for the members of our family and to our wider community. The family movie night, hands held at prayer over meals, a note in your husband or wife’s lunch. The hug that says I am there and I recognize and value you. The look that says to our brothers and sisters in faith, I see only your love, not your agenda, nothing but love. The warm handshake or embrace at the sign of peace.

So it is:

So it is with us. We must see the members of our immediate family and our larger family as essential, as vital to our well being. We must see them as necessary to our ability to love, and their love as essential to us.

When Paul talks about obedience and submission today he is not speaking about subservience, but exactly the types of trust and respect we are to have within our families and within the Christian community. Our loving, our embrace of love is both a right and a responsibility. God created this connectedness in creating families, in commanding that we be fruitful and multiply, that we form the bonds of family within our homes, within our communities, within our Holy Church and among all the people God has called to be His own.

Our model:

This past week we concluded Holy Synod. Our Church family gathered together. Was it all peaceful and perfect, of course not. Was there strong debate, opinion, and difficulty, certainly. Are we one Church, yes. Because we are family we see beyond the moments of difficulty to the love that is in each person. We see the great care and concern each person brings, with their voice and their vote, to build the family of Christ. It is the model each of the clergy and delegates learned at home, to care, to be concerned, and to walk away as brothers and sisters, leaving after a holy embrace, a hug, and a word — until we see each other again.

God’s model:

God’s model goes to the heart of the interconnected nature of His people. That is why we celebrate this Solemnity. That is why the Christian Family is so essential to the life of the human family. In the Christian family we find the call to the love, to the perfection of love, to all that is necessary for our very survival, as family, as the Holy Church, as Christians, and as brothers and sisters. God has connected us and asks us to embrace each other – to see beyond the facade and the supposed agenda, to the love that is at the heart of each person. To embrace each person with the love that is within us. To recognize the love in them. Then greet each other with a holy kiss — or at least — a hug. Amen.