Bishop Kemme Opens Jubilee Year
Along with his fellow bishops in diocesan cathedrals across the globe, Bishop Carl A. Kemme opened the universal church’s jubilee year on Sunday, Dec. 29, at Wichita’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. Since that Sunday in the Octave of Christmas corresponded with the Feast of the Holy Family, the bishop pointed to that family as a subject of contemplation.
Even if many deem the Holy Family as a model for families to follow, he said, the bishop suggested a different term.
“I think they are rather the icon of family life,” he said. “A model, like a statue or other figure, is seen, observed, but an icon is written and read and their family life deserves to be read with deep intensity and reflection, noticing the little details that emerge when we take the time to ponder what is before us.”
The bishop also said Pope Francis had asked all the church’s diocesan bishops to open the jubilee by inviting people to enter into the year with deep love and devotion as pilgrims of hope.
Pilgrims of hope
The Christmas season is a very popular time for taking and sharing family photos, Bishop Kemme said, and although those images are heartwarming and enjoyable, Christmas is about Jesus’ family.
“His family we call holy, for this word best describes the three, and only three, members of that most unique and historically most important of all families that have ever walked the face of the earth,” he said.
“The family of Jesus was poor, simple, often hidden from the view of society at the time. They would have all but been ignored by the powers that were present in the time and culture in which they lived, but interiorly, theirs was a dynamic of divine proportions.”
The bishop said the Holy Family lived the virtues, including heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience while obeying God, the law, and each other.
“They were anchored in the mission that God had given to them, even if they could not always understand it, given their human and natural growth and development,” Bishop Kemme said.
“Remember that even Jesus was required to grow in wisdom, age and favor. They possessed all of this, either because of a divine nature wrapped in human nature or, in the case of his mother and foster father, because of the singular graces bestowed upon them for the part they would play in salvation history. For all of this, they are known as the Holy Family.”
Although the Holy Family grounds Christians in hope, he said, that hope is not about addressing worldly problems and challenges, but a supernatural hope in the glory that awaits those who strive to imitate the Holy Family.
“Pope Francis has called for this Jubilee Year as a time to pray for and anchor ourselves in this supernatural hope,” Bishop Kemme said. “The anchor is an ancient symbol of hope. The anchor served an important function in helping ships not to drift too far afield, but to remain on course. Jesus is this anchor for us, he and no other; in him is all our hope and we shall never hope in vain.”
The bishop closed his homily by urging his flock to evaluate the extent to which Christ was their lives’ anchor. He also called on them to embrace their calling as missionary disciples to help spread that hope to those who lack it.
“Who if not us will be beacons of hope for them, helping them to taste what we experience in Christ, the love of God made visible,” he said.
“This hope can be shared in simple ways, a kind word, a complement, a gesture of peace and forgiveness, a shared meal to ease someone’s loneliness, a prayer intention, almost anything that communicates a supernatural grace. This is the unique gift we can give and many in our world are in desperate need of it.”