Feast of the Holy Family: Learning to Love, Pray and Live in the School of Nazareth

1/1/2012

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In the holy habitation of Nazareth Jesus transformed family life. Already blessed as God's plan for the whole human race and the first society, the Christian family has been elevated in Christ to a Sacrament, a vehicle of grace and sign of God's presence. The Church proclaims Christian marriage, and the family founded upon it, is a vocation, a response to the call of the Lord. In the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we learn the way of love in the School of Nazareth.

The phrase "domestic church" was one of particular fondness to the great Bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom. It was a framework for the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on Christian marriage and family. Blessed Pope John Paul II developed this teaching in his "Christian family in the Modern World" and his "Letter to the Family". In these writings he invites every Christian family to, using his pregnant phrase, "become what you are", a domestic church.

The Holy Family of Jesus, Joseph and Mary is not only our model, it is the beginning of the new family of the Church. Our Gospel story today tells us of a family trip which is packed with lessons for those enrolled in the School of Nazareth. In and through the ordinary stuff of daily life we find Jesus and in the encounter discover ourselves. Pope Paul VI wrote: "Nazareth is a kind of school where we may begin to discover what Christ's life was like and even to understand his Gospel. .Here we can learn to realize who Christ really is. . Here everything speaks to us, everything has meaning."

We live in Church. We were baptized into the Lord and now live in His Risen Body as members. The Church is a communion, a relationship in Christ. The Christian family is the smallest cell of that Body of Christ. The extended church community is a family of families. This understanding is more than piety--it is sound ecclesiology, solid anthropology...it is reality. Family life is where the "rubber hits the road" for most Christians. It is here where the universal call to holiness, in all its real, earthy, humanness and ordinariness, is first issued. It is here where we learn the way of discipleship.

Family is where progress in the spiritual life can find its raw material. Whether we choose to respond to grace - and develop the eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to accept the hidden invitations to learn to love beneath the surface of that daily "stuff" - is all wrapped up in the mystery of human freedom. Our choices not only affect the world around us, they make us become the people we will become.

St. Paul exhorted the early Christians to "Have this mind among yourselves which was in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself " (Phil. 2:5) The Greek word translated "emptied" in St. Paul's letter to the Philippians is "kenosis."

This word refers to the voluntary pouring out-like water-of oneself in an act of sacrificial love. This "emptying" is the proper response of the love of a Christian for the One who first loved us. It is also the very heart of the vocation of Christian marriage and family.

When the right choices are made in this life of "domestic kenosis", this life of domestic emptying lived in Christian family, we change. We are converted. We cooperate with the Lord's invitation to follow Him by exercising our human freedom; we choose to give ourselves away in love to the "other."

In this life of responding to the Lord's invitations we are gradually transformed into an image, a living icon, of Jesus Christ, as Pope Benedict XVI reminded the faithful. This way of holiness is not easy, as anyone who has lived the vocation can attest, but make no mistake; it is a very real path to holiness. It is also a wonderful one.

The challenge lies in the choices we make, daily, hourly, and even moment-by-moment. Two trees still grow in the garden of domestic life. They invite the exercise of our freedom, which is the core of the Image of God within us. There is the tree in Eden where the first Eve said, "No I will not serve." Then, there is the Tree on Calvary where Mary, the "second Eve" stood with the beloved disciple John and, along with him, again proclaimed her "yes".

Through those choices, presented to us from the moment we open our eyes every morning to the time we close them at night, we are invited to learn in the "School of Nazareth" and, in imitation of the Holy Family, become a domestic church. We are invited into a domestic kenosis, learning to love, pray and grow in holiness in the School of Nazareth

St. Paul wrote to the early Christians: "Brothers and sisters: Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection." (Col. 3)

The first school of prayer and practice, the place where we learn this new way of life, is the first cell of the Church, the domestic church of the Christian family.

- - -

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Family, Marriage, Christian family, Christian marriage, domestic church, holiness, universal call to holiness, Holy Family, prayer, Deacon Keith Fournier

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1 - 7 of 7 Comments

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1 year ago
The Holy Family. This is a wonderful model and example for all of mankind. It is wonderful to understand that when God created Adam and Eve, he created family. It has taken me a long time to understand that the Family is at the foundation of creation. Until recently I finally understand how the Holy Trinity and the Holy Family are one in Heaven via family. It is so remarkable and wonderful. I wish that the faithful were taught from the pulpit more about the Holy Family and why it is important for us to understand the importance of its role as a fulfillment of the Holy Sacrament of Marriage. Thank you for this informative article.
Bill Sr.
1 year ago
What was life like for Jesus within the Holy Family?
. Some say he went off to travel the world and review other lands and their culture. Others think he lived like John the Baptist in the dessert. The gospel narratives simply say he returned with Mary and Joseph to Nazareth and grew in wisdom and strength. I tend to go along with the gospels. I suppose you could wonder if it really is a point to be concerned about for any true believer yet it is puzzling.

However, since none of us were there and if we accept that the “word of God” given to us as the “Bible” we know today, inspired by God, and reveals all we need to know concerning our salvation history and the teachings of our saving Lord, then why the void?
If I can assume for a moment that I have the right to formulate an “opinion” of my own in this regard then here it is for you.

First I will make it abundantly clear that I believe that Jesus was truly incarnate, meaning “God with us” just as the scriptures tell us. And that he was also truly a “man” in all ways save “sin”. With God all things are possible so I see no contradictions in the use of these terms to describe our Lord. This amazing reality is the very reason why the Church venerates the “lord’s handmaiden” Mary, our Immaculate “mother of God”. She was designated in heaven to be the bearer on earth of God’s only “begotten Son”. His offering of pure and holy love for a humanity he held so dear that he was willing to become one of us in order to have as many of us as would recognize and accept him for his own.

Secondly, I believe that little boy of twelve which Mary found in the temple knew all along where he came from and why he was on earth. He and Mary and Joseph surely had many conversations concerning the origins of their “family life”. As soon as the child Jesus began to speak the voice of God was present in their household, was it not? What kind of conversations do you imagine took place at meal time? And would you dare speak of it (the wisdom of His words) to the neighbors? Mary and Joseph already knew they were a marked couple and needed to keep a low profile for God’s plan until our Lord was prepared to announce his presence.

The pressure to reveal God’s presence among His people building up in their tiny habitat had to be felt more by Jesus then any of them. This is why he left himself behind that day. He couldn’t wait to announce the good news to mankind, particularly the hierarchy in the temple. “Don’t you know (mother) that I must be about my fathers work?” he asks of Mary. “Yes, but not yet, you are still a child and they will just mock you or think we put you up to this. Please wait until you can stand man to man with them, then they’ll listen to you”… might have been Mary’s response to her child. This was the Fathers plan and the guiding Spirit was still overshadowing the family.

So the “Word” had to acknowledge the “flesh” and admit that though the world was in need, the Father’s plan required just what Christ’s holy mother might have suggested. The next period of Christ’s life was spent like the rest of us, learning how a boy becomes a man among men. In other words, Jesus had to experience all the feelings and emotions associated with mankind, how we’re affected by our day to day chores and the burden sin put upon man. These lessons he willingly accepted just as he did in the garden prior to his passion. You see, the God of our universe through Christ chose to experience humanity in order that humanity might experience God on earth.

If we only set aside wild imaginations or tall tales of want-a-be liberal theologians and dwell on the holy family as simply and clearly portrayed in the gospels we can understand how they must have made certain they appeared to be “normal”, yet all the while knowing they were one of a kind trusting in the Holy Spirit and doing God’s will according to His plan among and for mankind.

Truly, the Holy Family is a model for all of us. Good St. Joseph quietly protecting and providing, Mary ever watchful of her Emmanuel until “His time” was to come, and Jesus accepting His humanity in the name of our Father in heaven for all mankind.
We should allow this holy season to refresh our appreciation and love for family life by reflecting upon that humble but holy little family of Nazareth which endured the labors of common life and held the secret of man’s salvation in their hearts so long that we might have the fullness of God’s light shine upon us again and again at Christmas time.
abey
1 year ago
With the revelation of GOD through His Christ & Son, unto the gentiles ,the promise of Abraham is extended backward right to the First parents, such that their family which being whole mankind is offered life in Christ Jesus or Yeshua meaning salvation. It is a great irony as to how the Jews missed out the Messiah when he came, seems stuck in their Leavens, with the same clear & present danger exist today in the very same leavens of Man as it was with the Jews, for His coming as stated will be like a thief. Pray that it be as St. Bernard stated, the intermediate coming, of Christ which basically is the revelation of the Covenant in the fulness Prophesied by Prophet Jeremiah ,in the book of Maccabees.
SaraPalen
1 year ago
(If I only would have named one of the kids Track).the choice of name would be a good Christian name for anyone (well, maybe part Hebrew). But the more famous of the name has some quailities,of which I can relate and admire- from the love of moose, my five kids all knowing how to shoot a gun, and being able to use a triple wrapped prussic to catch one from a fall into the abyss, (If one knows anything about climbing or ropes, one understands the analogy), to the love of the unborn as a person, But I am more interested in something different, yet similar-more like a triple-wrapped Prussian-the German Shepherd of our faith and what he says and writes-(he too has mentioned something about this liturgy of the hours), what the other Church fathers have said on the treasured pages of history which today seem new and fresh. This is the kind of mountainon which my family and I need the help of a triple wrapped Prussian, being arrested from falling into the deep abysses of moral relativism-by the simplist yet most encompassing circle- not to cling to every doctrine that blows in the wind (this is more like the noose of the hang man). So, thanks for explaining the Liturgyof the Hours to us. hope you keep carrying on, for sure.Hope the beautiful prayers and the words of the saints are a big help to those who endeavor on the slopes of the thing called faith, stirring in us the grace of the Holy Spirit. And Merry Christmas to you too! (sorry to carry on with the metaphores and analogies, but seems the things of everyday life, like what's in a name, causes thoughts of the spiritual life and modern day paradoxes, Besides, it's a name that was chosen for me, if that's what you meant by interesting choice of names).
Deacon Keith Fournier
1 year ago
To SaraPalen: Interesting choice of a name... Thank you for your question. The Liturgy of the Hours is the formal prayer of the whole Church. It contains the psalms, arranged in sequence, scripture readings and an Office of Readings with WONDERFUL portions from the writings of the early fathers, saints, and church documents. It used to be called (and still is by many) "The breviary" or "the Divine Office" and was prayed by priests, deacons and all in religious life by virtue of their vocation. It is now ENCOURAGED as a base of prayer for all of the faithful. It can be prayed in its entirety or portions can be used. I strongly recommend it as a framework for daily prayer for all believers. It is a true treasure. You can order it online, buy it at most religious goods stores or find it online (for example: http://www.universalis.com/) I think actually having the set and physically reading from it during prayer daily is the best route to allow it to bear its wonderful fruit. But, then again, I am a book fan. I hope that helps. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
jh
1 year ago
Beautifully written, and edifying.
SaraPalen
1 year ago
Deacon Keith, what is this Liturgy of the Hours you keep carrying on about in many of your articles? Is that just for ordained people, or can families pray this "liturgy" also? and, if families could pray these prayers, how would they start?

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