The Holy Family

Yesterday was the Feast of the Holy Family.  Each year, on this feast day (almost always the first Sunday after Christmas), the Church widens our gaze from the infant Jesus to His entire family.  Next weekend, in the Feast of the Epiphany, the Church widens our gaze even further to make the point that Christ is the light for all nations, and how all people can now enter "the family of God". 

 

Family life is not easy and I doubt it ever has been. We have also spoken in this blog before on some of the events in the life of Joseph and Mary and Jesus, and how they involved faith and sacrifice.  One event we have not really discussed was one that was mentioned in yesterday's Gospel (Luke 2:41-52)  and that was an event from Our Lord's adolescent years, the only time Scripture unveils an event from that stage of His life.  Mary and Joseph become separated from Jesus in a caravan on their way home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and they returned to Jerusalem to find him teaching in the Temple.

 

Check out this selection from yesterday's Gospel.

 

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?”

 

 

Some of this may make modern parents incredulous! Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, and Mary and Joseph did not know it?  They "thought" he was in the caravan and journeyed for a day before deciding to return to Jerusalem?  Then, after returning to Jerusalem, it took them three days to find Him?  For our modern eyes, at first glance, all this sounds ridiculous,  like Joseph and Mary were bad parents.   To me, however, this story gives us several important lessons.

 

1) This story speaks to the power of extended families and friends.  Mary and Joseph thought Our Lord was simply among their family and friends in the caravan with them.   Larger families are not in existent as much as they have been.  Our circles of not just families, but friends in general, is much smaller than it perhaps has ever been.  In those days, one could trust one's child to roam around because it was safer, we had a bigger safety net.  Parents could trust people to not do harm to their children.  Sadly, that is not the case anymore.

2) It also speaks to the power of trusting our children.  Mary and Joseph could trust Jesus to roam around.  Sometimes parents today wish to obsesses over every detail of their child's life and not give him or her the space and independence to grow into the person they are called by God to be.   There are situations where not giving our children the benefit of the doubt is the right thing to do, but maybe sometimes more often than we think, we should.  This leads to the final point next.
3) It also speaks to the primacy of God's call to everyone.  Our Lord understood that while he loved His earthly mother and father,  He had to do His Father's will first.  Family ties are important. but not absolute.  Each of us has a unique vocation from God, that while indeed nurtured in the family, is given and decided by God, and thus, our priority must be Him first, and our loved ones second.

 

At the Shrine yesterday, I saw a large family.   There was a mother, and father, and five children.  The family stayed after Mass for several moments to give thanks and spend time with Our Lord while He was still sacramentally present to them in the Body they had just received in Communion.  Large families are so rare these days that when one does so see them, we often cannot help but often stare at them for a few seconds.   How would our world be better, be safer, if we had more large families.  More large families lead to more support structures, more children alive and feeling safe, and thus, a more stable, safe society, one in which our children could more freely roam and explore like Our Lord did.

 

I eagerly await the Holy Father's Post-Synodal exhortation on the Family due out sometime in 2016.  Family life is tough these days, and sadly as a result, some are not even attempting to start down that road.  We need to encourage people to start families.  To be quite frank, we need more people in the world.  We have spoken before about how we have contracepted and aborted our populations and birthrates down to alarmingly low numbers, and this is part of the reason the world is in the shape it is in.   Strong family life is an antidote to the isolation, loneliness, and fear so prevalent in the modern world.  We need a renewal of family life today.  Let's pray to Our Lord, His Mother, and Saint Joseph, to help us begin that renewal.

 

Joseph, Head of the Holy Family, pray for us.