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And the child grew and became strong,
And he was filled with wisdom.
I recently came across a term I had never heard before
which I found it really powerful and insightful.
It is a psychological term called “mattering.”
The general concept behind mattering is
that a child, when they are growing up, needs to be loved.
If they do not get that love, then they will not be balanced human beings.
Psychologically and spiritually, we need love to be fully integrated.
This term mattering says they also need to know that
they matter and their love matters.
In other words, it is not just enough to receive the love
but they must know that they have to give love;
there is an expectation that they give love
and that this matters and it matters for their whole being.
Psychologically it is about how to become a well-balanced child,
a necessary component is to feel loved.
Love matters in the development psychologically of children.
As Christians, this is an integral component of the development
of disciples as well as human beings.
It comes in the form of the singular command that Jesus gives.
“Love your God, the Lord, with all your heart, your soul and your mind.
And love your neighbor as yourself.”
The “love your neighbor” is that God loves us
And then we return that love by loving our neighbor.
And you see how balanced that is.
That is particularly important today
because we celebrate the Feast of the Most Holy Family.
And we hold up the Holy family as a model
of how we are to be in this world.
How we are both as a family, a nuclear family, our own family,
and then the greater human family, how it extends beyond into that.
That is the model that we are trying to follow.
We know that Mary and Joseph loved Jesus
and how much work they went to in order to keep him safe.
We do not know a lot about those childhood years
because there is a huge gap missing in the scriptures.
But we know that Jesus loves Mary.
We know that Joseph has passed by the time
he went into his public ministry.
But Mary was still heavily involved in his life
and followed him everywhere he went.
And Jesus was attentive to the needs of his mother.
So much so that even on the point of death, death on the cross,
he looks at John and says, “Take her in as your mother.”
“And mother, this is your son.”
In other words, Jesus was making sure
that she was taken care of, even in his dying breath.
Now, why is that so important?
They model for us that our love matters
even when we are adults beyond the age of 18.
That love of a child to parent love
is a very important and not just nice,
but that it is essential.
It matters to us.
We need it in the core of our being.
When I came to this country,
I found it difficult to understand that in the US when you turn 18,
you leave the house forever!
There is a two-way expectation.
With the parents, “Now that you are 18 out, you go.”
And then when they themselves turn 18,
they say “Hey, I am out of here.”
It is not just one sided.
Both seem to have this expectation
and that is not true around the world, like in Ireland.
That is simply not the case in Asia, or Mexico or many places.
The children stay around for forever.
In Ireland, I left when I was 24,
but my brother still lived there until he was 34.
Back in my parents' house, my room is still there like a shrine.
I had a friend whose son turned 18 here in the US and went off to college.
As he was leaving, they were saying,
“Well, you need to take all your stuff out of your room,
out of your bedroom, everything.”
He says, “What?” “Well, that is no longer your room.
Now your room is gone and let me clean everything.”
It was like a guest room.
Yikes!
It is important that the young people in particular need to know,
not only are they loved,
which I think we do a decent job with,
but that their love matters back.
That we need their love.
And not by the way, just for us as parents, right?
We need their love for the world.
They need to know that their love matters.
Their caring in the world matters for us.
And this is not just a psychological thing.
This is a deep spiritual reality for us that love matters in the world,
and we need them to be all that they can be.
That is why we have just built this youth center
as a dedicated a space for them
so they know that they matter,
that they have a space that they can call their own.
Their expectation then is that they go out and love others.
This is not just for them, but for them to be a witness to the world
and to draw in others to that same understanding;
that same cycle of virtue and of love.
It seems so straightforward,
but it is actually kind of hard work.
And the question is then where do we go?
What do we do to look?
Today's readings give us the hint.
The first reading from Sirach tells us about the whole family.
How we are meant to be fathers, mothers, children.
And gives us these hints.
Then the letter to the Colossians goes way deeper.
It says that we were meant to be put on
heartfelt compassion, humility, gentle kindness,
bearing with one another, forgiving.
Then like a cloak,we put on love.
This is the model that we are given,
not just for our human family,
and not just when for our children,
but for our whole human family.
We are called to be that in the world.
But it certainly starts with us.
I do not think any of us intend not to love in that way,
but there is something about us that we let things wane.
Let me give you a metaphor that hopefully will hold this together.
We have been over this during the whole Christmas cycle hearing
the metaphor that Christ came into the world
to be the light in a darkened world.
That is the language we hear
Christ is the light of the world
and we are called to be that light in the world out there.
Oftentimes we think of our light as an on off switch.
You are on or off.
I do not think that is generally what happens.
Generally, it is a light switch, but it is on a dimmer.
And it is not that we are on or off.
We are just turned way down low.
We are loving, but not very much.
We are not turned upright.
We are not loving and extending ourselves into people's lives.
We are not loving as a sacrificial loving.
What we are called to do is to turn that dimmer switch up the whole way,
and it has to be a habit.
I do not know whether it is because of the busyness of our lives
or the that there are so many distractions in life that come our way,
but that light seems to turn down automatically w
ith the busyness in our world today.
We have to make every effort to turn the dial, to keep it fully bright.
That is why we come to the Eucharist.
That is why we listen to the scripture.
That is why we come to do what we are doing here each Sunday
because we come to turn it up the whole way.
But it is not enough, because as soon as we get out of here,
it starts to dim again.
And we to keep turning it up throughout the entire week.
How we do that is how we treat one another.
Like Colossians says, heartfelt compassion, gentleness, h
umility, kindness, bearing with one another, forgiving and loving.
That is the work we are called to do.
It is hard work, but it is worthy work.
And we model it after the Holy Family
who sets that model up for a lifetime.
We need to love our children,
because that is the important critical component.
But also to let them love us, and know that their love for us matters.
That it matters a great deal.
It matters for our soul, not just a nicety.
And that becomes even truer the older and older and older we get.
That love matters all the more
because it gets balanced out over the years.
I am not keen on the 18-year-old push out, to be honest with you.
We need to take something from our Asian cultures
and some other cultures that do this way better.
I do not think that works out really well for us.
We need to balance this out and say,
“Yes, we love you, our children and our family,
but we need your love as well.
Your love matters in this world,
and we want it not just for our nuclear family,
but for the whole human family.”
It is important that we love one another
because love matters to our last day,
to our last breath from child to parent, from parent to child.
And the child grew and became strong,
And he was filled with wisdom.
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