Feast of the Holy Family

The Feast of the Holy Family is always celebrated on the Sunday after Christmas Day. The gospel accounts that we hear during Christmas give us an idealistic image of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as a family. It’s easy to gaze on the images in the stable and recognize the holiness of the newborn Savior, his mother, and his stepfather. It may be harder to look at your own children, or parents, or brothers and sisters and see reflections of that same holiness in them. Living together day after day, you see your loved ones, warts and all.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us of how important the family is to society. Paragraph 2210 tells us that “the Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.” Our Church recognizes the family as “a domestic church…a community of faith, hope, and charity; it assumes singular importance in the Church.” (PP# 2204)

Jesus chose to come into this world as part of a family, and so we need develop the ability to see our own families as holy. We should see a reflection of the baby Jesus’ holiness in each child in our own families. We should see the holiness of Mary and of Joseph reflected in ourselves as parents and in our own parents.

The gospels are silent about Jesus’ childhood, but because he was truly human as well as truly God, Jesus no doubt had nosebleeds and skinned knees, tried dangerous stunts, didn’t get enough sleep sometimes and was cranky. Jesus would have been expected to study Hebrew and the Scriptures, and perhaps there were battles over homework. We get a glimpse of Jesus at age twelve in the Gospel of Matthew, wandering off in Jerusalem, causing Mary and Joseph to panic. He may not have had the opportunity to take Driver’s Ed or ask for the car keys, but no doubt there were other, similar parent-teen encounters!

Some may find such speculation to be sacrilegious. “Jesus is perfect,” they’ll object. “Jesus is God!” How very true. And Jesus was also a baby, a teenager, and a young adult, too. True God, true man. Maybe one of the delights of this Christmas season is that some of the small quirky things about us as human beings – the terrible twos, the teenage struggle for independence, parents’ angst about their child – maybe all of these are saintly and part of what it means to a holy family.