Connecting the Holy Family with Our Own Experiences

Connecting the Holy Family with Our Own Experiences

 

This weekend we celebrate the Feast of the Holy family and during the prayers of the faithful we will pray entrusting ourselves and our families to the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We call that a consecration which literally means “association with the sacred”.  There are many consecrations in our Church and many ways to be grow in holiness, thanks be to God.        

Why the Holy Family? Well, Jesus was born into a family.  God chose to redeem us by coming to dwell among us in humility, starting in a family. St. Paul writes, “Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself.” (Phil 2:2-6a)

The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, #11 says “The family is, so to speak, the domestic church.” This means that it is in the context of the family that we first learn who God is and to prayerfully seek His will for us. Who better than the Holy family to be our model? 

It should not be a surprise that our families face many struggles today through both cultural pressures and personal struggles. The Holy Family was not too much different: wondering about a pregnancy that was neither expected nor planned, causing tension in the relationship of Mary and Joseph. Mary pondered the things the Angel said and accepted the Word of God. Joseph, afraid of the situation, but also wrestling with it in his thoughts, trusted the message he received in a dream and was open to what God placed before him: the responsibility of caring for and raising the Son of God with his wife.

Their next challenge: a government census, which caused the Holy Family to travel a great distance on the back of a donkey and on foot, only to be turned away from any sort of comfortable lodging room.  Mary and Joseph followed Gods will with contemplation, but certainly not with full understanding. The child Jesus was born and greeted by shepherds and Magi. As a model of obedience, Jesus was brought to the temple for circumcision. Some confusing and distressful words were spoken there about the future of the child and His mother.  And any plans of getting comfortable quickly faded.

As the head of the household, Joseph was told in a dream that the child Jesus was in danger from Herod’s plan to eliminate any competition to his throne, so Joseph should move his family to Egypt.  It is the first responsibility of a father to care for his family, whether natural, adopted or fostered.

When finally, the worst danger was over after a couple of years, again Joseph was given the responsibility to bring his family back to Judea, but because the Sons of King Herod still ruled in the area of Bethlehem they settled in Nazareth.

As a model of piety and of obedience, the Holy Family went to Jerusalem for Passover, when Jesus was a young boy. It was a requirement for the men of that time, but the whole family went.  On the way home, Mary and Joseph were searching for Jesus for three days, among the others in their caravan and were anxious about His whereabouts. Is there a parent who does not worry for a child whose whereabouts are unknown? 

Finding Jesus in the temple, they are astonished as He answered questions of those in the temple. His words that he must be in his Father’s house were not understood. Jesus shows us the fullness of freedom as the Son of God totally united with the will of God the Father.  He shows us that we must be faithful to God. And as a good son of Mary and Joseph, Jesus retuned home and continued to grow in wisdom. Mary continued to keep all these moments in her heart in contemplation.

There are plenty of ways we can learn from the Holy Family who, as a family, were not unlike our own in many ways. They teach us to listen to God’s words; to be obedient to His Laws and we thus grow in wisdom and understanding. Why not ask for their help? 

The Knights of Columbus offered words of encouragement last week along with some guidelines to prepare ourselves individually and as members of our individual families and our Plainville-Wrentham collaborative family. Good preparation requires us to be cleansed body; mind; and soul to receive the full benefit of the intercession of the Holy Family. Perhaps this week you spent time contemplating the Holy Family members and received the sacrament of reconciliation during the Advent season. Maybe you even fasted.  If you missed the opportunity to prepare, do not worry: if after today you make a sincere effort to “cleanse body and soul”, it will make the words of prayer today more efficacious. We have just celebrated the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus, and earlier in Advent learned that “nothing will be impossible for God.”