Holy Family

For the holiness of families

On the Sunday between Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family.  During this time when many if not most of us take time to spend with our families, it is right that we should venerate the Holy Family: Jesus, his mother Mary and his foster-father Joseph.  In fact, the Holy Family has been celebrated in this way since the 17^th century.  One of the first promoters of this Feast was Blessed François de Laval, the first Bishop of Quebec, then known as New France.

Every year, when this day arrives, we think of the members of our own families.  We give thanks for the joys we have shared with them over the past year, and we pray for God’s protection for them in the coming year.  The society in which we live these days recognizes the fact that family units come in all shapes and sizes: there are nuclear families, made up of fathers, mothers and their children; there are families composed of step-parents and children; there are family units which include multi-generations, and there are family units made up of single parents who share custody of their dependent children.  The modern-day Canadian culture also makes room for other units which it refers to as ‘families’, including common law partners and more recently, same-sex couples.  One thing is true: the definition of the family unit has become more and more complicated in recent decades, and as a result it is that much more important that we need guidance in order to understand the wisdom of today’s feast.

Like all the Saints, the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph provide an example for us.  There is wisdom to be gained from their words and actions, but the question remains: what precise lessons can we learn from the Holy Family, and how can we apply them to our own families?

Family life is never perfect.  While there are many instances where we find comfort, solace, guidance and strength in our families, there can also be moments of worry and suffering.  We worry about the ones we love the most, we suffer because of this love, and we often learn some valuable lessons about life and about ourselves from the way we interact with the members of our families.

The Holy Family can teach us how to be holy.  Mary and Joseph must truly have been special people.  On one hand, they had been asked to guide and to teach Jesus the lessons that would make him the man he would become, but on the other hand, his humanity was only a part of his entirety.  Tradition also teaches that Jesus was fully divine, so there must have been moments when his parents were acutely aware that they were teachers but also students in the presence of the Master.  When Mary and Joseph discovered that Jesus was not in the caravan that had left Jerusalem, they worried about him, they went back to Jerusalem in search of him, but they didn’t appear to blame one another.  Instead, perhaps they understood this as one of those moments when they themselves became the pupils.  Maybe this is the reason why when they eventually found him, they didn’t scold him; rather they took this opportunity to explain their worry, and to clarify the expectations that they had of him.

As for the young Jesus, staying behind to talk with the elders and teachers made sense to him.  At age 12, a Jewish boy celebrates his Bar Mitzvah and assumes responsibility for his faith.  Catholics too, in many cases celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation around this age, and we believe that those who participate in this sacrament are henceforth responsible for their own faith development.  Like many young people his age, Jesus was excited about this new responsibility, so excited in fact that he forgot to communicate with his parents, to tell them that he was staying behind.  Even though he may have been keen to exercise this new-found freedom, he was not yet fully equipped for adult life, so having recognized his parents’ concern, and because he knew that he was well loved, he returned home with them.  Through the rest of his adolescent years, he continued to grow in wisdom. 

I wonder what other lessons Mary and Joseph learned.  Some but not all of them are described in the scriptures.  I wonder what other wisdom Jesus may have learned from his parents.  I wonder whether they were all that different from the lessons that all teenagers learn from loving parents and from caring adults who teach them by word and example how to be responsible, faith-filled human beings.

May Joseph and Mary intercede for us today, and may the Holy Family always provide for us an example of the holiness that is possible in all our families as we strive to be the best of teachers for our children.  May we also never be afraid to learn from our children, for wisdom is born from the realization that no matter what age we are, we are always learning.