Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

(12/29/2024) Gospel Reading: Luke 2:41-52

 

“I Must Be in My Father’s House”

 

Open our hearts, O Lord,

to listen to the words of your Son.

 

From the desk of Fr. Leo Alban Asuncion

     The family photo-album is not produced very often especially in this present period of cell phones, I-pads and computers, and even then, only on very special occasions and only for very special people. Our past is a very intimate part of us. We would not like strangers to “burgle” our bank of youth.” When the daughter of the house becomes engaged, it is customary to invite her fiancé' to peruse the family album. Here, he will meet his future partner at all the important moments of her past. There will be snap-shots of her as a baby in her mother's arms, sleeping in her cot, playing on the nursery floor, Baptism, birthdays, First Communion, Confirmation, holidays, school outings, graduation, etc. The record seems virtually complete. And yet, in most cases, what is missing from the album is far more important than what it contains. For one thing, the camera catches only the smiles, and they were both fleeting and false. There is not a single shot of baby’s tantrums, and they were far more frequent and furious. The events recorded are all special. Our past has no roving camera to catch us unawares, doing what we did every day. There is no film of our sickness and setbacks. There are no tears framed here, no pain, no sorrow.      

     Strangely, in the infancy narrative, St. Luke put in the album, a different set of pictures of the Holy Family. He does not shy away from the sordid or the sad. The animal eating-through where Mary cradled her baby is included. There is a dark side to each of the events pictured here. The inn keeper's refusal, Herod's death threat, exile in Egypt, Simeon's warning, lost in Jerusalem. The annals that trace the early years of that family between Bethlehem and Nazareth, with its stint as emigrants in a foreign country, fairly reek of poverty and deprivation.          

     Few would dispute that the family today is a threatened institution. In most developed countries, it is ravaged by divorce. The breakdown rate hovers around the fifty percent mark. Parental authority is seriously undermined. Television has replaced the hearth as the focal point in the living rooms. Commercials, beamed into the sanctuary of the home, raise expectations which many budgets can never hope to satisfy. Even the very young are targeted as potential consumers. While poverty can sometimes be benign, debt often proves malignant. For marriage it can prove terminal. Adversity, on the other hand, only serves to strengthen family ties. Such was the experience of the Holy Family.        

     If marriage today is in crisis, it may be because we are following the wrong models. Perhaps we have traded the Holy Family for our favorite soap-operas. We should peruse again that family album. Family solidarity comes through in each incident recorded, in bold relief. Mary's concern and care for her child is transparent. Joseph hovers in the background protectively. The danger, the poverty that overshadowed their early marriage, bonded them more closely together.

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Meditation: How can families grow together in mutual love, harmony, and care for one another? When God made a covenant with his people, he taught them his way of love:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength - And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart - and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deuteronomy 6:5-7).

God the Father's love is a covenant love that binds people together as his beloved children. His love is the cornerstone that binds man and woman in one flesh in marriage, and in their mutual love for their children, and for their children's children for generations to come. God wants his love to be the center of all our relationships and all that we do. That is why God gives us his Holy Spirit so we can love as he loves us. "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Romans 5:5). We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Jesus was born into a family devoted to the word of God
When God sent his only begotten Son into the world, Jesus was born into a human family as a Jew who was raised according to the teaching and wisdom of God's word in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament Scriptures) and the religious customs of his people. Jesus was born under the law of Moses (Galatians 4:4) and was circumcised (the sign of being a covenanted member of Israel) on the eighth day and given his name, Yeshua in Hebrew (Jesus in English) which means "God saves."

We know little about Jesus' early life at home in Nazareth. Luke in his Gospel account gives us a glimpse of Jesus' growth as a boy into young manhood. Luke tells us that Jesus was obedient to his parents - Mary, his mother and Joseph, his foster father. As devout and God-fearing Jews, Joseph and Mary raised the boy Jesus according to the Scriptures and Jewish customs. It was the duty of all Jewish parents to raise their children in the instruction and wisdom of God's word in the Scriptures.

"Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and reject not your mother’s teaching" (Proverbs 1:8). "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).

A home life centered on prayer and the reading of Scripture
Jewish home life was centered on daily family prayers, including the singing of the Psalms and the reading of the Scriptures. Every Friday evening, the family gathered for a festive meal with the lighting of the Sabbath candle and prayers of blessing over the bread and wine to open the celebration of the Sabbath holy day. Each Saturday morning the family attended the Sabbath service which includes a reading from the Torah (five books of Moses) and chanting the psalms at the local community synagogue. Older boys were sent to school on weekday mornings, called the "house of the book" (either at the synagogue or the rabbi's house), where they were given further instruction in the reading and study of the Jewish Scriptures. Every Jewish boy was required to memorize the first five books of the Jewish Scriptures (the Torah or Books of Moses) by the age of 13. They also learned to memorize and put into practice the wise counsels found in the Book of Proverbs (Wisdom of Solomon) and the Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) which was another common book of instruction for Jews living throughout the Greek-speaking world.

Jesus' journey to the Father's house
Jews were expected to travel to Jerusalem for the high feasts each year (Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles). Jesus undoubtedly traveled with his parents every year from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. This eighty mile journey normally took three days. So families often traveled in large groups, for safety and comfort.

Luke records a remarkable incident which happened when Jesus went up to the temple at Jerusalem for his first Passover at the dawn of his manhood (usually the age of twelve for Jewish males). It was at this key turning point in his earthly life that Jesus took the name "father" from Joseph and addressed it to God his Father in heaven. His answer to his mother's anxious inquiry reveals his confident determination to pursue his heavenly Father's will. Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house? (Luke 2:49)

Jesus obeyed and served his family at Nazareth
While Jesus identified himself as Son of the eternal Father in heaven, he, nonetheless, submitted himself with love and obedience to Mary and Joseph. Like all godly parents, Mary and Joseph raised their son in the fear (Godly respect) and wisdom of God. Luke tells us that Jesus grew as a man in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and with the people of Nazareth, his home town. He remained at Nazareth until the age of 30 when he was baptized by John at the River Jordan and anointed by the Spirit for his mission as the Messiah and Savior of the world. (Thirty was the traditional age when a Jewish man could become a rabbi who taught and formed disciples in the knowledge and wisdom of God's word.) Do you seek to love and serve your family and to pursue peace and harmony in your home, neighborhood, and community?

The Lord Jesus came to show us the way to our Father's house and family in heaven. Listen to his word and obey him and you will find great peace, joy, and favor in serving him now and forever.

Lord Jesus, you came to restore us to peace and friendship with the Father in heaven. Where there is division, bring healing and restoration. Where there is strife bring peace and forgiveness. May all families and nations on the earth find peace, harmony, and unity in you, the Prince of Peace and Savior of the world.

   read more at: https://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org

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