Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is normally celebrated on the Sunday after Christmas. This feast developed at the beginning of the 19th century in Canada and then spread to the entire Church in 1920. At first, it was celebrated on the Sunday after Epiphany. It is a Feast that seeks to portray the Holy Family of Nazareth as the “true model of life” (cf. Opening Prayer) from which our families can draw inspiration and know where to find help and comfort.

When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” … When Herod had died, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” He rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there. And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee. He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazorean” (Mt 2:13-15, 19-23).

Family in movement

If there is a fact that is striking when reading today’s Gospel text, it is all the “motion” verbs: depart, arise, flee, take refuge, stay…. There is even a map that is no less impressive: Bethlehem, Egypt, then Nazareth. Certainly, the key to all this “movement” is found in the citation of the Prophet Hosea: “Out of Egypt I have called my son” – a place of refuge for the persecuted and the place of departure for Israel’s Exodus. The Family of Nazareth thus traces the journey of many persecuted people and refugees down through history. At the same time, it recalls the powerful hand of God who knows how to liberate His people.

The experience of the family of Nazareth cannot but make us think of the many families today who are also “in movement” – certainly of those families forced to leave their homes and their own land in search of peace, serenity and work, but also of those families who live with the apprehension and anxiety of not making ends meet, of unstable marital situations, the fear of illness…

In the family of Nazareth, our families, as well as the human family, can learn to allow ourselves to be guided by God’s powerful hand. If it is true on the one hand that in many situations people feel like “refugees”, “strangers in their own homes”, or in the heart of a dear one, it is also true that every obstacle, every difficulty can be transformed into an opportunity to “depart”, an opportunity for a “journey toward conversion” which alone can lead to serenity, peace, stability.

The Holy Spirit speaks to today’s families

Today, the Holy Spirit still continues to guide “all peoples”, “all couples”, “all parents”. But we need to listen to the Spirit who speaks in us. If the Son of God came to live with us as a child, and only the eyes of faith can perceive His presence, how important it is to remind ourselves that everyday things are never of little importance, that daily occurrences are never useless or purely coincidental. The eyes of faith are necessary to grasp the hidden and the beyond. Everything becomes a “place” to encounter or reject God’s presence. Everything is a sign for those who believe.

The gospel of the family

To live the gospel of the family is not easy today. Those who want to defend life from the moment of conception are criticized or attacked. Yet in the Gospel we find the way to live a beautiful life on the personal and familial level, a way that is certainly challenging, but attractive and all-embracing. It is a way that still deserves to be trusted and undertaken after the example and through the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth itself. There are happy and sad, serene and difficult moments in every family. This is life. To live the “gospel of the family” does not exempt us from experiencing difficulties and tensions, of encountering moments of pleasant fortitude and painful weakness. Families who are wounded and marked by weakness, failure, difficulty…can rise again if they learn how to draw from the font of the Gospel. There, they can rediscover new possibilities of starting over.

Prayer

The hidden life of Nazareth

allows every person
to be in communion with Jesus
along the most ordinary paths of everyday life.
Nazareth is the school
in which we begin to understand
the life of Jesus, that is,
the school of the Gospel...
In the first place, may it teach us silence.
Oh! May an appreciation
of this stupendous and indispensable

atmosphere for the spirit return to us...
May it teach us the way to live in the family.
Nazareth reminds us what the family is,
what communion of love is,
its austere and simple beauty,
its sacred and inviolable character…

Finally, let us learn a lesson of work.
Oh! House of Nazareth,
home of the “Carpenter’s Son”!
Here, we especially want to understand
how to praise the severe but redeeming law
of human labor...
We want to greet workers throughout the world
and show them their great model,

their Divine Brother.
(Saint Pope Paul VI, discourse of 5 January 1964)

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29 December

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord… When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions of the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. (Lk 2:22-40)

Protecting children

On the Feast of the Holy Family, it comes spontaneously to think of all families and the role of parents called to “cultivate and care for” (cf. Gn 2:15) the lives of their children from the time they are conceived in their mother’s womb (cf. Is. 49:1; Ps. 139:13-15 – “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb”), helping them to grow and mature.

The mission of Jesus

The presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the words of Simeon and Anna to His parents reveal Jesus’ mission, they break open the horizon. Simeon and Anna are elderly and have lived in expectation of this day. Simeon is profoundly religious, so attentive to the voice of the Spirit that the evangelist underlines it three times (Lk. 2:25, 26, 27): the Holy Spirit was upon Simeon (v. 25); The Holy Spirit had revealed to him… (v. 26); Moved by the Spirit, he came to the temple (v. 27).

Of Anna, instead, the text says that “she never left the temple” (v. 37). These are important features, because they describe the familiarity these two elderly people had with the Lord and demonstrate how much they awaited the Messiah prophesied by the prophets. It is this familiarity that made them “capable” of recognizing the Lord when He came. They knew how to read everything in the light of the Word on which they meditated day and night, and they knew how to go beyond evidence. It is truly the Spirit that guided Simeon and Anna to welcome and recognize Jesus. In this world they had their fill, they no longer had any expectations: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word…” (v. 29).

The Holy Spirit speaks to today’s families

Today, the Holy Spirit still continues to guide “all peoples”, “all couples”, “all parents”. But we need to listen to the Spirit who speaks in us. If the Son of God came to live with us as a child, and only the eyes of faith can perceive His presence, how important it is to remind ourselves that everyday things are never of little importance, that daily occurrences are never useless or purely coincidental. The eyes of faith are necessary to grasp the hidden and the beyond. Everything becomes a “place” to encounter or reject God’s presence. Everything is a sign for those who believe.

The gospel of the family

To live the gospel of the family is not easy today. Those who want to defend life from the moment of conception are criticized or attacked. Yet in the Gospel we find the way to live a beautiful life on the personal and familial level, a way that is certainly challenging, but attractive and all-embracing. It is a way that still deserves to be trusted and undertaken after the example and through the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth itself. There are happy and sad, serene and difficult moments in every family. This is life. To live the “gospel of the family” does not exempt us from experiencing difficulties and tensions, of encountering moments of pleasant fortitude and painful weakness. Families who are wounded and marked by weakness, failure, difficulty…can rise again if they learn how to draw from the font of the Gospel. There, they can rediscover new possibilities of starting over.

Prayer

Jesus, Mary and Joseph
to you, the Holy Family of Nazareth,
today, we turn our gaze
with admiration and confidence.
In you, we contemplate
the beauty of communion in true love.
To you, we recommend all our families,
so they might be renewed in this wonder of grace.
Holy Family of Nazareth,
attractive school of the holy Gospel:
teach us to imitate your virtues
with a wise spiritual discipline.
Grant us a pure vision
that knows how to recognize the work of Providence
in the everyday happenings of life.
Holy Family of Nazareth,
faithful guardian of the mystery of salvation:
grant us a renewed esteem for silence,
make our families cenacles of prayer
and transform them into small domestic churches.
Renew our desire for holiness,
Sustain the noble fatigue of labor, of education,
of listening, of reciprocal understanding and forgiveness.
Holy Family of Nazareth,
reawaken in our society the awareness
of the sacred and inviolable character of the family,
a priceless and irreplaceable good.
May every family be a welcoming abode of goodness and peace
for children and the elderly,
for those who are sick and alone,
for those who are poor and in need.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
we pray to you with confidence,
we entrust ourselves to you with joy.
(Pope Francis, Prayer recited in front of the Icon of the Holy Family on the World Day of Families, 27 October 2013)

Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man. (Lk. 2:41-52)

The gift

The first fact that emerges from the Biblical texts for this Feast is that a child is a gift from God. We see this in the First Reading that narrates the birth of the prophet Samuel. It can also be gleaned from Jesus’ response to His parents in the Temple.

Incomprehension

“Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” In Mary’s question, “Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety”, Mary is thinking of His father, Joseph. In His response, Jesus refers to God His Father. Mary and Joseph “do not understand”, even though they knew that this child was a “gift from God”. In the end, only the Cross will fully reveal everything regarding who Jesus is, the Son of God.

Mary’s journey of faith

That response was not easy for the Virgin Mary. In fact, the evangelist points out that she “kept all these things in her heart”. She did not throw the memory of the event out of her memory and her heart. Rather, she was aware that she had to wait in order to understand. This is the journey of faith in which doubt does not impede hope, but opens it up in expectation.

Joseph and Mary - parents

As parents do today, even Joseph and Mary experienced difficulty understanding the words and choices of Jesus, their Son. Above all, today’s parents can learn from them that a child must grow up and is certainly called to correspond to the many expectations placed on him or her – expectations of parents, friends, colleagues…. But there is an even more important, fundamental and foundational expectation that comes from God, the Father and Creator. Before this expectation that comes as a “call” in each person’s heart, the most appropriate attitude is that of prayer, of “keeping it” at heart so that everything might be revealed in its time and at the right moment.

The Holy Spirit speaks to today’s families

Today, the Holy Spirit still continues to guide “all peoples”, “all couples”, “all parents”. But we need to listen to the Spirit who speaks in us. If the Son of God came to live with us as a child, and only the eyes of faith can perceive His presence, how important it is to remind ourselves that everyday things are never of little importance, that daily occurrences are never useless or purely coincidental. The eyes of faith are necessary to grasp the hidden and the beyond. Everything becomes a “place” to encounter or reject God’s presence. Everything is a sign for those who believe.

The gospel of the family

To live the gospel of the family is not easy today. Those who want to defend life from the moment of conception are criticized or attacked. Yet in the Gospel we find the way to live a beautiful life on the personal and familial level, a way that is certainly challenging, but attractive and all-embracing. It is a way that still deserves to be trusted and undertaken after the example and through the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth itself. There are happy and sad, serene and difficult moments in every family. This is life. To live the “gospel of the family” does not exempt us from experiencing difficulties and tensions, of encountering moments of pleasant fortitude and painful weakness. Families who are wounded and marked by weakness, failure, difficulty…can rise again if they learn how to draw from the font of the Gospel. There, they can rediscover new possibilities of starting over.

Prayer

Jesus, Mary and Joseph
to you, the Holy Family of Nazareth,
today, we turn our gaze
with admiration and confidence.
In you, we contemplate
the beauty of communion in true love.
To you, we recommend all our families,
so they might be renewed in this wonder of grace.
Holy Family of Nazareth,
attractive school of the holy Gospel:
teach us to imitate your virtues
with a wise spiritual discipline.
Grant us a pure vision
that knows how to recognize the work of Providence
in the everyday happenings of life.
Holy Family of Nazareth,
faithful guardian of the mystery of salvation:
grant us a renewed esteem for silence,
make our families cenacles of prayer
and transform them into small domestic churches.
Renew our desire for holiness,
Sustain the noble fatigue of labor, of education,
of listening, of reciprocal understanding and forgiveness.
Holy Family of Nazareth,
reawaken in our society the awareness
of the sacred and inviolable character of the family,
a priceless and irreplaceable good.
May every family be a welcoming abode of goodness and peace
for children and the elderly,
for those who are sick and alone,
for those who are poor and in need.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
we pray to you with confidence,
we entrust ourselves to you with joy.
(Pope Francis, Prayer recited in front of the Icon of the Holy Family on the World Day of Families, 27 October 2013)