Dark Devotional: The Wilderness of the Family

I followed the crowd into the building, my eyes adjusting to the multicolored light streaming through the stained-glass windows. The interior space of the large church intentionally fashioned to look like a forest. Large columns carved to give the impression of tree trunks more than building support. Much of the inside lacking all the detail of a traditional cathedral. The exterior walls of the church house the sculptures that tell the tale of La Sagrada Familia. But the inside, while not empty of words or images, is lacking a story or a message about the Holy Family. Instead, I encounter a vast interior space lit from without.

I remember my time in the Cathedral of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the magnum opus of the Spanish Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi, as I turn to the readings for the Feast of the Holy Family. It’s not just the name of the feast day that brings the church to mind but the spiritual journey inspired by the daily readings.

The USCCB website explains there are three possible choices for the reading before today’s Gospel. None of them, if I’m honest, do I really want to choose.

The readings do not make me feel any pious calling to prayer. No inspiration to live joyfully in gratitude for the people in my life. Instead, they raise my levels of frustration. I feel self-doubt. Have I approached my roles well?I feel as if I’ve failed to be a father and a husband. I also feel the first stirrings of anticipated failings as I read about the duty to care for and honor elderly parents. Maybe it’s good to let that reading go. Allow for the other readings to pull me deeper into prayer.

Yet I’m brought up short by the next suggestion. Paul’s discussions of wifely submission, strong love and authority by husbands, and children’s obedience do not invite me into prayer or to understanding but instead make me feel as if I am called to play-act my life and not live it. Put on compassion, gentleness, and kindness? Instantly my mind recalls the every day family interactions where none of those adjectives would be an accurate description of the bickering, nagging, forceful tone present in the day to day.

I move on, hoping the psalm will offer some relief from the choices offered in the first reading. A great lament at how hard it is to be a parent, perhaps? A call to the Lord for help? Instead I am faced with a psalm promising prosperity and blessing IF I fear the Lord and walk in God’s ways. I sigh in frustration knowing that fear of God is not something I lack. God intimidates me! Further, how to walk in God’s ways? Is it more play-acting? Too mired in sin for my own good then. Too broken to do it well and so my wife and children sadly must bear the brunt of my sins and I must bear theirs? A toxic brew that we must all force each other to drink daily?

And then the “good news”:

When the magi had departed, behold,

the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,

“Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt,

and stay there until I tell you.

Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.”

Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night

and departed for Egypt.

 

Even here, the Holy Family is under attack. Called to leave the Holy Land and to travel under cover of darkness. To escape death from the one in power, the Holy Family must enter the land that conjures up images of slavery and death for the Jews.

So we have reached the end of the readings for the day. There will be no feel-good modeling on how to be a family here. No pious platitudes. No how-to explanation. There is nothing but a call away from the holy land, a pull to travel into the wilderness and arrive in the land of slavery and death to wait for the call of God.

I realize how accurate Gaudi’s Cathedral of the Holy Family is. Exterior walls that tell a story. An interior space that recalls wilderness. An interior wilderness supporting an exterior story. A story about a family. La Sagrada Familia.

Truly, how could it be anything else if it is to remain real and not some romantic projection, some fulfillment of stereotype? To remain real, the Word of God made flesh will not be a victory march but a slow pilgrimage of loss until full incarnation in the world. It will be a self-forgetfulness that feels like death but which shines as love. It will be a resurrection – yet who knows what that is or how to prepare for it?

The logic of the readings leads me in one direction. All I can do is walk in God’s ways, letting my eyes adjust to the multicolored light shining forth from everyday encounters with the Holy. I am marching to Egypt, where I will wait for God to call. Making a slow pilgrimage of loss until full incarnation in the world.

Kevin M. Johnson is a scholar practitioner of contemplative spirituality. An adjunct professor of theology and philosophy at Sacred Heart University in CT, he also runs the Roman Catholic non-profit and lay association The Inner Room that focuses on contemplative spirituality and continuing theological education that results in renewed social justice actions in the world. Kevin is invited to lead lectures, workshops, and retreats around these themes. He also blogs at Daily Theology and the Patheos Catholic Channel’s Inner Room, a blog focused on contemplative spirituality and the recovery of ancient Christian practices and social imaginaries