In the Piercing

A Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family

Simeon says to Mary: “And yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” I would like to suggest that this is the very action of the Incarnation itself: The Divine pierces humanity; the light pierces the darkness as the sword pierces the heart. And God is received and God is revealed in the piercing!

Many of you know that right before Christmas I lost my brother Tim. He was the second brother I lost to death over the last 7 months, as my brother Mike passed away back in May. And, of course, in the Midwest, where I grew up, we maintain many of the traditional practices around funerals. We still hold the visitation or viewing at the Funeral Home where friends and family are welcome to come and express their sympathies as well as their own grief. A reminder that we grieve in community and never as isolated individuals.

At the visitation for my brother, my siblings and I, of course, formed the expected receiving line and that is where I saw God in the piercing. Peoples’ faces seemed unusually raw with sorrow. And as people passed they struggled, as we all do, to express something of that sorrow. And it struck me, as I watched their faces, that there was grief for my brother, but many also expressed other sorrows weighing on their hearts, griefs still undigested, and underneath that, I intuited something of the grief that cannot be spoken. The heart of human fragility, vulnerability, and brokenness unsparingly laid bare.

The sword pierces so the heart of humanity might be revealed as the very heart of God.

God is in the piercing. The Incarnation in action is the action of being pierced. The Divine pierces the human; the light pierces the darkness as the sword pierces the heart… and the thoughts, the brokenness, the fragility, of the human heart is laid bare.

I struggle with that insight: God is not only in the peace that may eventually come, the healing that is perhaps already underway, the hope that will rise up defiant in the face of inextricable loss, God is the piercing itself. The Incarnation means God is made known most vividly in broken hearts laid bare on human faces so often unaware and too often unseen because so often unlooked for.

And this is not because God delights in sorrow and grief but rather because God has divinized the deepest human sorrow, the grief that cannot be spoken, which opens the door for the greatest human healing and hope and lays the foundation for the formation of a truly Holy Family to which we all belong.

One of my favorite spiritual authors is Ruth Burrows and she writes that: Before Jesus there was no one transparent enough to receive God as fully as God desires to be received. But Now there is… with the coming of Christ… Now there is. And by the coming of Christ, in the act of Incarnation, by that piercing, we too are being transformed into that same transparency; a transparency that Burrows describes as a wound so wide and so deep that we now become able to receive and reveal God more fully.

When God pierces a single human heart, the brokenness of many hearts is laid bare… we see the wound, we realize we bear the wound that is the transparency by which Christ is revealed through us. In the face of the grief that cannot be spoken all one can do is awaken gentleness and compassion toward self and others and offer mutual assistance and affection to one another. And by that response we discover our place amid this Holy Family; a family sanctified by sorrow, divinized by grief and who come together to form something greater than our individual selves.

When the sword pierces our hearts, by necessity, the broken heart of humanity is laid bare and if we can stay in that place together then we form a holy family of faith. We learn what it means to be a wound of transparency by which Christ is fully received and revealed.

God is in the piercing.