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OUR FAMILIES, “HOLY” AND OTHERWISE
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This essay needs to combine the Solemnities of Christmas and Holy Family for the obvious reason that they are one day apart from each other. So what can we say about this special juxtaposition?
The first thing, I suppose, is to examine what it means to be a “holy” family. Is this a descriptor that must be limited to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph? Are all other families, by definition, not “holy”?
We think of the home of Nazareth as “holy” because the child is the Son of God, the mother is the Immaculate Conception, and the father is the silent one who acquiesces in and embraces the other two. On this basis, no other family could possibly be called “holy.”
But there are other aspects of these feasts that can lead us to understand that our families, too, can be “holy.” Joseph had to teach his Son the skills of workmanship, and the Son had to be willing and able to be a good apprentice. What patience both father and son would have to exhibit! How often do our own fathers need that patience when teaching their children how to do a certain thing, or how to learn a certain lesson!
Mary had to be the kind of mother who would take proper care of the home and all the domestic responsibilities that go along with that charge. They might not be the same as those today, but they pretty well were the same as recently as the 1950s and beyond: cooking, cleaning, purchasing, tending, healing… Were there extended families? Almost certainly, and did Mary get along perfectly with her in-laws? Maybe not… But they got along, no doubt, one way or another.
What kind of partnership of mother and father is required today, that parallels the needs of the 1st century? Now there are duties of life shared by all the family members: shopping and cooking, cleaning and sorting, chores and babysitting of younger siblings.
The “holiness” of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph goes beyond their individual sanctity and spills into their mutual relationships of responsibility and love. Here’s the secret for our becoming holy families, too: how do we work together, pray together, laugh and love together, struggle and grow together?
We are not called to be that “Holy Family” of 1st century Nazareth. We are called to be “holy families” here in 21st century Mobile. And we can, if we are willing and able to put God in the center of our lives (both as individuals and as a family). We can be a “domestic church,” and we can be consecrated to the Lord by choice, even if (when) we slip up. Did Joseph or Mary ever get frustrated with Jesus, or He with them? I’d be surprised if this did not happen! Might Jesus have had colic as a baby? Might Mary have gone through depression when Joseph died? Did Joseph feel resentment at the way his marriage didn’t work out as he’d first hoped? Why not? Even Jesus is confessed as truly divine and truly (aka, fully) human.
Lord, make our families holy—make us rooted in you, in spite of frustrations and disappointments and in our joys and satisfactions. Help us to be holy.
