The following is a transcript of Bishop Caggiano’s Sunday homily, December 29, at St. Augustine
Thank you.
My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, I make every effort to avoid looking at the news feed that appears on my phone because it is inevitably bad news. But this day, the day after Christmas, I gave into the temptation. As I’m looking through the articles and looking at all the wars and calamities and disasters and gossip and scandal that seems to mark our the world. There were two articles that I stumbled upon which I thought were fascinating.
The first reminded us that there is a housing shortage. We all know that. That homelessness in this country may reach the largest level since the Great Depression, in that we need to build houses that people can buy and live in. And then the second article maybe gave a reason why we have such a shortage. Could you imagine in New York City, in Tribeca, the average rent for an apartment with one bedroom is 8,300 $300 a month. Insane.
Now, of course, I’m not raising this for you so that we could debate what the social solution is. I raise it because the real thought it provoked in me was, my dear friends, there is not just solely a housing shortage in America.
There is a home shortage in America. And there is a great difference between having a house to live in and having a home to belong to. And as you and I celebrate this great feast of the Holy Family, we remind ourselves of the great insight that Paul VI offered to us nearly 60 years ago when he went to Nazareth and spoke about the gift of the home that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph formed as an invitation for you and I, no matter what our family looks like, and they look very different, every size and shape imaginable, that every family can create a home.
So my dear friends, the question we could ask ourselves is, what does it take to make a home, to make a house into a home? The answer lies with what the Holy Family did. Among many other attributes, they exhibited, too, every moment of their lives together.
Can allow me to suggest that that’s homework for you and me in the new year. And that is to look at the family of which we are apart, wherever you and I may live, and ask the question, do we live Christian charity together? And do we live respect for each other? For those two qualities, my friends, are essential for us to be able to enjoy that which God wants for us, that we live in a home of love and peace.
Charity. Charity is to lift up those with whom we live, no longer to look at those around us as those who are to serve my needs my desires, my pleasures, what I want, but rather to lift up those around us. A husband lifting up his beautiful wife as the spouse God chose to walk with Him to heaven. And the same for her wife, for her husband. For parents to look into the faces of their children with deep gratitude because they are the physical expression of their love, and also to see in them precious lives that God is asking through their love for them to lift them up and allow them to blossom with all the goodness and beauty God has in store for them, not to be their friends, but to be their parents, to discipline, to encourage, to correct, to accompany, even when they mess up royally.
You see, my friends, love is something we can often take for granted. But love is essential for family to become one great unit of love that is literally the dwelling place of the Holy spirit. And the house they live, whether it is magnificent or simple, whether it has four walls and a roof or whether it has many, many rooms, that house will become a home for them when love is made real.
And where there is love, there is respect. And respect, my friends, is not found often in the world because I dare say it is not often found even in our families. And respect is acknowledging one another’s place, obligations, and duties. For those of you who have the privilege to be parents and grandparents, allow me to remind you that God has asked you to be the first teachers of the faith way before they come to their mother, the church, to learn the language of faith. You do it not by giving a lesson, but by living your life in fidelity to Jesus to be an open catechism of His love. Our children in our midst to remember that they are to respect their parents, even the Lord in the gospel today, who is God himself submitted to Mary and Joseph.
After all, He created them, but He submitted to them in obedience because he respected those who were his mother and foster father, their authority over Him, and knew that by following what they asked, he would be doing the Will of the Father.
So my dear friends, I alluded to the that New Year’s is only a few days away. You are in the midst, as I am, of making resolutions. Can I give you spiritual homework? And perhaps I could cast it this way. Among the many promises you and I will make, solutions, please God, we will keep. Can we ask ourselves the question, in the family God gave us, whatever it may be, is there something you and I can do to make that family become more of a home to one another? What is it you and I have neglected to do, forgotten to do, taken for granted over the years and Can we make the resolution to do it in the new year so that all the families of God can live in homes of love and respect with His spirit living in the midst of it.
For I do not stand before you, my friends, with any practical solution on how we’re going to solve the housing shortage. But God has given us the solution on how to solve the shortage of homes. The question is, will you and I do it?