HOLY FAMILY
During the Octave (eight days) of Christmas we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. The significance of the Feast becomes much more meaningfu
l when we consider the deeper truths it reveals. Yes, it teaches us about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. But it also speaks to each one of us how to live differently in our own families, make Jesus Christ the centre of our life together.
Through our Baptism, we are invited to live our lives in Jesus Christ by living them in the Church - which is the Risen Body of Christ, continuing His redemptive mission. The Church is the place where we learn, as the Apostle Paul reminded the Colossian Christians, to "put on love, that is, the bond of perfection". (Col. 3:14)
The Church, as sacrament and sign,mediates and reveals the Lord's life to us, in the Word proclaimed and the Sacraments communicated. Jesus has been raised from the dead. The head and the Body cannot be separated. He continues his ministry through His Church. As the Catechism states with such simplicity and profundity "The Church in this world is the sacrament of salvation, the sign and the instrument of the communion of God and men." (CCC# 780)
The Gospel of Holy Mass during years when we follow Cycle A, is taken from the second chapter of Matthew (Mt. 2:13-15, 19-23). It tells of the journey of the Holy family to Nazareth when, after being warned in a dream by an angel, Joseph, the Guardian of the Redeemer and Husband of Mary, steered them away from threat of Herod and to the town where the child would be raised and fulfil another of the ancient prophecies, He shall be called a Nazarene.
Our Sunday liturgical readings on Sunday, in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, rotate over a three year sequence. This year is Cycle B, and we hear the presentation of Jesus in the temple account in St. Luke and the beautiful canticle of Zechariah. (Luke 2:22-40) Upon the Holy Family leaving the temple to return to Nazareth, we heard these words:
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 favour of God was upon him.
All of the accounts, in each year, point us to Nazareth and the profound truth of what occurred there. Yet, it is Luke who offers that profoundly important insight into the life of the supernaturally natural life of the Holy Family. There, in Nazareth, the Holy family lived a Holy life, precisely because Jesus was at the centre of it all.
