Our True Home
Why did Jesus choose to become a baby born of a mother and father and to spend all but His last years living in an ordinary human family? In part, to reveal God’s plan to make all people live as one “holy family” in His Church (see 2 Corinthians 6:16-18).
In the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, God reveals our true home. We’re to live as His children, “chosen ones, holy and beloved,” as the First Reading puts it.
The family advice we hear in today’s readings—for mothers, fathers and children—is all solid and practical. Happy homes are the fruit of our faithfulness to the Lord, we sing in today’s Psalm.
But the Liturgy is inviting us to see more, to see how, through our family obligations and relationships, our families become heralds of the family of God that He wants to create on earth.
Jesus shows us this in today’s Gospel. His obedience to His earthly parents flows directly from His obedience to the will of His heavenly Father. Joseph and Mary aren’t identified by name, but three times are called “his parents” and are referred to separately as his “mother” and “father.”
The emphasis is all on their “familial” ties to Jesus. But these ties are emphasized only so that Jesus, in the first words He speaks in Luke’s Gospel, can point us beyond that earthly relationship to the Fatherhood of God.
In what Jesus calls “My Father’s house,” every family finds its true meaning and purpose (see Ephesians 3:15). The Temple we read about in the Gospel today is God’s house, His dwelling (see Luke 19:46).
But it’s also an image of the family of God, the Church (see Ephesians 2:19-22; Hebrews 3:3-6; 10:21).
In our families we’re to build up this household, this family, this living temple of God. Until He reveals His new dwelling among us, and says of every person: “I shall be his God and he will be My son” (see Revelation 21:3,7).
Saint Anthony of Padua
Sermons for Sundays and Feasts of the Saints
“He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them”
“He was subject to them.” With these words let all pride dissolve, all rigidness crumble, all disobedience submit. “He was subject to them.” Who? In brief, he who created all things from nothing; he who, as Isaiah says, “has cupped in his hand the waters of the sea and marked off the heavens with a span; who has held in a measure the dust of the earth, weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance” (40,12).
He who, as Job says, “shakes the earth and the pillars beneath it tremble. He commands the sun and seals up the stars. He alone stretches out the heavens and treads upon the crests of the sea; he who made the constellations; he does marvellous things beyond reckoning” (9,6-10)… This is he who, great and powerful though he be, was subject. And subject to whom? To a workman and a poor young maid.
O “First and Last”! (Rv 1,17). O leader of angels, subject to men! The Creator of heaven subject to a workman; God of eternal glory subject to a poor young maid! Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Has anyone heard such a thing before?
So no longer hesitate to obey or be submissive… Come down, come to Nazareth, be subject, obey perfectly: all wisdom lies in this… This is what it means to be soberly wise. Simplicity that is pure is “like the waters of Shiloah that flow silently” (Is 8,6).
There are people of wisdom within religious orders but it is by means of simple men that God brought them there. God chose the foolish and weak, the lowly and ignorant to bring together those who were wise, powerful and of noble birth through them, “so that no human being might boast in itself” (cf. 1Cor 1,26-29) but in him who came down, who came to Nazareth, and who was subject.
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address December 26, 2010
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Gospel according to Luke recounts that when the shepherds of Bethlehem had received the Angel’s announcement of the Messiah’s birth “they went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger” (2:16). The first eyewitnesses of Jesus’ birth therefore beheld a family scene: a mother, a father and a newborn son. For this reason the Liturgy has us celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family on the First Sunday after Christmas. This year it occurred the very day after Christmas, and, taking precedence over the Feast of St Stephen, invites us to contemplate this “icon” in which the little Jesus appears at the centre of his parents’ affection and care.
In the poor grotto of Bethlehem — the Fathers of the Church wrote — shines a very bright light, a reflection of the profound mystery which envelopes that Child, which Mary and Joseph cherish in their hearts and which can be seen in their expression, in their actions, and especially in their silence. Indeed, they preserve in their inmost depths the words of the Angel’s Annunciation to Mary: “the Child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35).
Yet every child’s birth brings something of this mystery with it! Parents who receive a child as a gift know this well and often speak of it in this way. We have all heard people say to a father and a mother: “this child is a gift, a miracle!”. Indeed, human beings do not experience procreation merely as a reproductive act but perceive its richness and intuit that every human creature who is born on earth is the “sign” par excellence of the Creator and Father who is in Heaven.
How important it is, therefore, that every child coming into the world be welcomed by the warmth of a family! External comforts do not matter: Jesus was born in a stable and had a manger as his first cradle, but the love of Mary and of Joseph made him feel the tenderness and beauty of being loved. Children need this: the love of their father and mother. It is this that gives them security and, as they grow, enables them to discover the meaning of life. The Holy Family of Nazareth went through many trials, such as the “massacre of the innocents” — as recounted in the Gospel according to Matthew — which obliged Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt (cf. 2:13-23). Yet, trusting in divine Providence, they found their stability and guaranteed Jesus a serene childhood and a sound upbringing.
Dear friends, the Holy Family is of course unique and unrepeatable, but at the same time it is a “model of life” for every family because Jesus, true man, chose to be born into a human family and thereby blessed and consecrated it. Let us therefore entrust all families to Our Lady and to St Joseph, so that they do not lose heart in the face of trials and difficulties but always cultivate conjugal love and devote themselves with trust to the service of life and education.
Appeal for peace
The desire for and invocation of the gift of peace have become even more intense in this Season of Holy Christmas. However, our world continues to be marked by violence, especially against disciples of Christ. I learned with great sorrow of the attack on a Catholic Church in the Philippines during the celebration of the Christmas Day rites and also of the attacks on Christian churches in Nigeria. The earth has once again been stained by blood in other parts of the world, as in Pakistan.
I would like to express my heartfelt condolences for the victims of this senseless violence and I repeat once again the appeal to desist from the path of hatred in order to find peaceful solutions to conflicts and to give security and serenity to the beloved populations.
On this day on which we are celebrating the Holy Family that had experienced the drama of having to flee to Egypt because of the homicidal fury of Herod, let us also remember all those — particularly families — who are forced to leave their homes because of war, violence and intolerance. I invite you to join me in prayer to beseech the Lord to move human hearts and to bring hope, reconciliation and peace.
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After the Angelus:
I am pleased to greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present for this Angelus prayer on the Feast of the Holy Family. Reflecting on the love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph for one another, we see that Nazareth is a kind of school where we may begin to discover the life of Christ and to understand his Gospel. May the peace of the Holy Family always be in your homes and fill you with gladness. Upon you and your loved ones, I invoke God’s abundant Blessings!
I hope that everyone will live these days in serenity and harmony, sharing the profound joy that flows from the Birth of Christ. Have a good Sunday!
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address December 30, 2007
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today, we are celebrating the Feast of the Holy Family. As we follow the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, let us fix our gaze on Jesus, Mary and Joseph and adore the mystery of a God who chose to be born of a woman, the Blessed Virgin, and to enter this world in the way common to all humankind. By so doing he sanctified the reality of the family, filling it with divine grace and fully revealing its vocation and mission. The Second Vatican Council dedicated much attention to the family. Married partners, it said, must be witnesses of faith to each other and to their children (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 35). The Christian family thus shares in the Church’s prophetic vocation: with its way of living it “proclaims aloud both the present power of the Kingdom of God and the hope of the blessed life” (ibid.). Then, as my venerable Predecessor John Paul II tirelessly repeated, the good of the person and of society is closely connected to the “healthy state” of the family (cf. Gaudium et Spes, n. 47). The Church, therefore, is committed to defending and to fostering “the dignity and supremely sacred value of the married state” (ibid.). To this end, an important event is being held in Madrid this very day, whose participants I now address in Spanish.
I greet the participants in the Meeting for Families that is taking place in Madrid this Sunday, together with the Cardinals, Bishops and priests who have accompanied them. In contemplating the mystery of the Son of God who came into the world surrounded by the love of Mary and Joseph, I ask Christian families to experience the loving presence of the Lord in their lives. I likewise encourage them, drawing inspiration from Christ’s love for humanity, to bear witness to the world of the beauty of human love, marriage and the family. Founded on the indissoluble union between a man and a woman, the family constitutes the privileged context in which human life is welcomed and protected from its beginning to its natural end. Thus, parents have the right and the fundamental obligation to raise their children in the faith and values which give dignity to human life. It is worthwhile working for the family and marriage because it is worthwhile working for the human being, God’s most precious creature. I have a special word for children, so that they may love and pray for their fathers and mothers and their siblings; to young people, so that encouraged by their parents’ love, they may follow generously their own vocation to marriage, priestly or religious life; to the elderly and the sick, so that they may find needed help and understanding. And you, dear spouses, may you always count on God’s grace so that your love may be increasingly fruitful and faithful every day. I entrust the outcome of this celebration to the hands of Mary, who “with her “yes’ she opened the door of our world to God” (Spe Salvi, n. 49). Many thanks and happy holidays!
Let us now turn to the Blessed Virgin, praying for the good of the family and for all the families in the world.
After the Angelus:
I offer a warm welcome to the English-speaking visitors gathered for this Angelus prayer. Today, in the heart of the Christmas Season, the Church celebrates the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. May the mystery of God’s love, made incarnate in the Child Jesus and reflected in the home of Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, dwell in your hearts and in your families throughout the coming year. Upon all of you I invoke an abundance of Christmas joy and peace!
