The Feast of the Holy Family

APOLOGETICS

I often wonder what the Holy Family (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph) must think of our society that seems intent on destroying the family. Reflecting on the roles of Mary as mother, Joseph as father, and Jesus as child gives us a spiritual perspective that can shape our understanding of our own roles in our families. As Catholic parents, we are called to model our own family life after the Holy Family in Nazareth, to build our own little “Nazareth” and raise saints to serve God and the world.

On pilgrimage to Nazareth in 1964, Pope Paul VI reflected, “Nazareth is a kind of school and how I would like to return to my childhood and attend the simple yet profound school that is Nazareth!” He explained that there are three key lessons to learn from Christ’s childhood:  it offered silence, it was a community of love and sharing, and it taught discipline.

Pope Paul VI mentions silence first, for in silence we are trained in prayer. A silent interior life is free of struggles and distraction; it is a life of constancy, whereas the noise of the world is disruptive and distracting. In interior silence we contemplate and have communion with God. If we have a relationship with God, we pray. It’s that simple. In modeling our families after the Holy Family, prayer must be the center of our lives and our greatest priority. If we wish to be holy families, we must pray. A holy family is our greatest weapon against the influences of the world and our most effective way of influencing the world. So let us pray…

Heavenly Father, you have given us the model of life in the Holy Family of Nazareth. Help us, O Loving Father, to make our family another Nazareth where love, peace and joy reign. May it be deeply contemplative, intensely eucharistic, revived with joy. Help us to stay together in joy and sorrow in family prayer. Teach us to see Jesus in the members of our families, especially in their distressing disguise. May the eucharistic heart of Jesus make our hearts humble like his and help us to carry out our family duties in a holy way. May we love one another as God loves each one of us, more and more each day, and forgive each other’s faults as you forgive our sins. Help us, O Loving Father, to take whatever you give and give whatever you take with a big smile. Immaculate Heart of Mary, cause of our joy, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us. Holy Guardian Angels, be always with us, guide and protect us. Amen.

CATECHESIS
This Feast Day of the Holy Family is greatly important, for the Holy Family is a model for all Catholic families. We celebrate this day in honor of Jesus our King, Mary His Mother, and Joseph, His legal father and guardian. We remember the triumphs of the Birth of the Messiah, but also recall the suffering of long journeys, possible lack of food and water on that journey, and of course, the undignified response of the innkeepers, who rejected comfort to the King of Kings and His Holy Family.

We know that Joseph was a “just man” as Scripture tells us and that Mary had been vowed to perpetual virginity (according to Scripture and Tradition). Their marriage, although one of chastity, brought forth great fruit for the world to behold. Even though Mary was “full of grace” and considered the “highly favored daughter,” she was met with hardship after hardship and lived with Joseph in poverty. Does this surprise us? No, of course not. Jesus explains this anomaly to St. Paul in the second letter to the Corinthians: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
 
Later, we see Joseph and Mary go on a three-day trip leaving Jerusalem to head home and finding that they left the Son of God behind in the city. Can you imagine their panic and how they must have wanted to hide themselves from such an embarrassment? This accident was not a sin, but a moment that was scripted by the Lord Himself, so that they might retain their humility and strength. So before you complain of your financial situation after this wonderful Holiday of Christmas or decide to snub a family member for too much crowding, consider the Holy Family and ask for their powerful intercession in your life! Take a moment to kneel before the crèche in Church this weekend, to ask the Holy Family to pour out their faith, hope and charity into your homes today.

THEOLOGY: Theological Covenant of God in the Family: No Family, No Covenant.
What is the first thing you think about when you hear the word covenant? Promise? Desire? Oath? Good intention? A bond? An agreement? There are countless ideas we could raise, but we really can’t use any of the above concepts because they do not share in the severity of what is being made in a covenant. A covenant is an everlasting and eternal promise, an agreement that cannot be changed and will never be changed; coming from God that is a pretty big deal. We see all types of covenants made throughout Holy Scripture with Noah, Abraham and Moses but the most important one could arguably be found in the covenant of the family found most perfectly in The Holy Family: Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

The covenant of the family means making a vow before God not only to stay together but to support and love each other always regardless of how difficult things become or how challenging it might be. St. Joseph would have had an incredibly hard time trying to explain to others in the city that Mary was pregnant and honestly it would have been easier for him just to run away and start his life over again; but he never would have conceived doing such a thing. Similarly, Mary was a very young girl that was approached by St. Gabriel (one of the three Archangels named in Holy Scripture) and was told that she would bear a son and call him Jesus. This would have been extremely disturbing and confusing to her because she was a virgin (and always will be, as one who maintains perpetual virginity). She could have said no but instead gave the answer, “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” How much love and devotion were given to each other by their actions and love. They had a covenant and a family now to take care of. This family is the model of perfection, the answer to love and whom we should ask for their intercession and help at all times.
 
Jesus, the Lord of all creation, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, came down and made himself known so that we might inherit eternal life with him. He came down in the form of a human (both 100% God and 100% man) so that we might become sons and daughters of the most high God and enjoy the glory with him as he experienced in the beginning of the world (see Jn 17). He wants us to be a family and promises to us in John 14 that those who love Him and keep his commands will “make our home” with Him. It is in this promise that we find that without a family, we have no covenant. If we are not part of God’s family and friendship (being in the state of Grace) we are not partakers of heaven but are on the path to perdition. God deeply desires all of us to be part of his family and remain with him because the eternal covenant that he promises us is that he has a room prepared for us in heaven. He has made a place for you and asks you to follow him and obey him and live in holiness. It is in this holiness that we find how to treat one another, in love, and how to start seeing one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. It is this eternal family that we find the covenant promise of God to dwell with him complete.

Remember, God came down to dwell with us so that one day we might dwell with him. This, is a promise worth listening to.