The following is Bishop Caggiano’s December 31, 2023 Sunday homily
Thank you, my dear friends in Christ. The very first world Youth Day that I attended as a catechist bishop was in 2008, in the most exotic of places in Sydney, Australia. And at the end of the very first session, when I gave my talk and I invited questions to be given from those who attended, one of the last questions that was offered was by a gentleman from New Zealand. And this is what he asked me. He said, bishop, what do you consider to be the greatest challenge that young people face in their life of faith?
Now, I must confess, I was not prepared for the question. I didn’t have an answer to the question, and I don’t even remember what I said as a response to the question. But I have not forgotten the question. It has haunted me for almost 16 years, and quite frankly, my friends, with all the experiences that have happened since, perhaps I can venture now to answer the question. But it is a question that does not apply solely to young people.
Quite frankly, it is a challenge that we all face of every age, even those of us in this church, even me.
And tonight, today’s feast may provide us part of the response we want to give to that challenge. So, first, what is the challenge? I’m sure others could answer the question in a different way, but at least for my part, the best way to describe the challenge is to put it this way. Seems to me you and I are either navigating in a world, or, for those who are younger, are growing up in a world where the world out there in so many obvious and subtle ways, in mass media, entertainment, television, social media, commercial marketing, our economics, and even our political life, tell us over and over and over and over again every day that you and I are not quite worth it. In other words, we need the latest to be accepted.
We need to have the right friends to get ahead. That we need the latest car or house, whatever, so that we’re more acceptable, that we’re never worth what we are as we are now, that there’s always more. So to put it another way, we’re never quite athletic enough, beautiful enough, handsome enough, rich enough, associated enough connected enough, educated enough to be worth it to someone else. And if you and I sit with that for long enough, we will come to the conclusion that we are not lovable as we are, that we have to work at being lovable. And if we’re not lovable the way we are, with all our faults and failings, then who can actually love us?
We accept that lie, for it is a lie. Then you can see, my friends, why we are coming into a world that’s becoming ever more angry and lonely and disassociated and anxious and sometimes leading even to despair. It may sound bleak, but there is a solution, my friends. There’s a solution as obvious as our face when we look in a mirror. For the solution is for you and I to go back to the roots of who you and I are in Jesus Christ and look at the holy family as the model for you and I to live in our own families.
You may say, bishop, well, why is this the solution? Pope Benedict, God rest his soul, before he died, said in one of his homilies, it is the family where, in the privileged place, that all its members learn to give love and to receive love, no matter what our family looks like. And they are all very different. They all are the seed beds of where you and I learn to be loved and to love one another. The holy family whom we honor today was that family.
It was the place where the father’s love was made real, literally, his son, who is love made in the flesh. And yet they lived a place, a time, a life, where their members, all three, loved each other completely and faced every challenge and suffering the world threw at them together. Consider, my friends, none of our families are without challenge. None of our families are perfect. None of them.
But the holy family faced sufferings and challenges that our families, perhaps, please God, will never have to. Giving birth in a stable, for there was no room in the world for their son to run for their lives to a different country. Because the government wanted to kill my child. To leave family, language, household, relatives, to live in a time when the gossip would have said that Mary was pregnant by God knows who. All those challenges they faced, always remaining a place where love animated all that they did.
So for you and I, my friends, to follow their example. We need to remember this. To be a loving family does not mean we have to be a perfect family, but to make the choices we need to make so that we never take advantage or granted for the people God has given us, our spouses, our children, our elderly parents, our aunts and uncles, and all those who are part of our family, near and far away. I’m not talking about love that the world understands. I’m talking about love that you and I have explored together.
Love, that’s a choice to do what’s good and right for the person. So when parents discipline their children, it’s an act of love, even though the child may not receive it with the best of humor. When a wife makes it her business or a husband, her business to spend time with his or her spouse and listen to what they’re really saying. To create space where they can share their innermost hopes and dreams. That’s an act of love.
To be able to forgive even when someone messes up royally. Hold them accountable for what they did, but never turn their back. Never turn one’s back to them. See, that’s the seed bed of love. And it is there, where you and I can relearn over and over again, that we are really lovable and that there are those who love us.
And going forth in life, we may face whatever challenge there is confident that God loves us also.
So may I make a suggestion, my friends? Tonight is New Year’s Eve. I presume almost all of us will stay up to welcome the new year. I will not, for the record, but I wish you all well at midnight. And you’re going to make resolutions, I presume I will make them, too.
I pray they will last at least the first week. I hope they will last. But may I suggest a resolution we can all make? What is the one thing you can do in your family to make it more a place of love? What is it you and I can do so that in our relationship with our spouse, our children, our parents, whoever else in this new year can make a difference, so that that person knows that they are truly loved and lovable for me, for God, and for those around him.
And perhaps that’s a resolution that we should keep, not just one day or one week, not just for one year, but for the rest of our lives.
