Facing contradictions

Today's readings: Genesis 15, 1-6.21, 1-3; Hebrews 11, 8.11-12.17-19; Luke 2, 22-40.

In the Gospel, Mary received two major 'breaking news' items: the first by the angel Gabriel that she would bear a son; the second by Simeon that the child would be a sign of contradiction. The Father's infinite love, given a human face though Jesus's birth, and which needs people to reach out to the world, is not easily recognised or accepted in the world. As with Jesus, the way God's love is made manifest will always be a sign of contradiction.

Jesus's life was marked by heavy contrasts from the start, right up to the way he died. He was loved and hated. He was a sign of contradiction because he was obedient and disobedient; he accepted the law yet abolished it; he went to the temple but destroyed it. It is understandable that, as Luke writes, "the child's father and mother stood there wondering at the things that were being said about him".

Today, as on every Sunday after Christmas, the Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Family. The good old days when the institution of marriage was sacred to the point of being protected by law and by society in general, seem to be past.

Ideally, marriage should remain sacred and the family continue to be of fundamental significance to society. But in a culture where the only absolute is that there should be no absolutes, even the very basics fall prey to opinion, to perception, and to pragmatism at its worst. The family is no longer sacred because few things remain sacred. Stability and permanence may be looked upon with suspicion in belief systems where everything seems to be ephemeral and where creativity and innovation are the buzzwords.

The contradictions we are living today are visible and tangible. We crave for stability but are afraid of permanent commitment. Many crave for a home but are afraid to enter marriage. We live in a time when all the terms of reference of daily living and of relationship-building have changed.

It's not the family that has changed, but society at large. The family is only the victim. After all, what has been happening to the family in these last decades, was what all institutions, including churches themselves, have been going through. The family is only a major casualty of the tsunami of social processes that have been not only changing tradition, but making us believe that it is no longer needed.

To make things worse, State and Church alike seem to be impotent to do anything. Institutions seem to have lost credibility in what they really can or are willing to do to save what is being lost once for all.

In the upheaval we are going through, doctrine is not enough. We need to go back to the cultivation of the spiritual disciplines. It is difficult to imagine how we can order our own 21st-century lives according to patterns other than those which by now seem to be here to stay. Unfortunately, we've turned ourselves into pragmatic people, even where our deepest needs and longings are concerned.

Yet we are becoming more vulnerable. As underlined in today's second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, it is only faith that will change the course of things in history. This is the connecting line from Abraham to Mary in what we call the history of our salvation. God will continue to intervene and give signs to alert us. But many a time it is only when deeply hurt that we come to our senses and acknowledge the need to change direction.

There are lessons to be learnt from what is happening. Maybe this is what Simeon the prophet refers to when, with the child Jesus in his arms, he speaks of the secret thoughts of many that will be laid bare.

In what the Church proclaims on marriage and the family, it's not that the Church remains focused pathologically on things as they were without recognising the deep tangible needs of the people today. The hard-earned wisdom of our distant ancestors in the faith, rather than just recommendations, may today be an indispensable source of hope for a perishing civilisation.