Our Lady of Lourdes Church and School

When I reflect on the Holy Family, whose Feast we celebrate today, I have to tell you, I usually think of a quiet, perfect, family. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are just three holy people living in an idyllic reality. I have to stop myself from thinking about the Holy Family in such a sanitized way, or as an overly pietized image. It’s not that I don’t respect our tradition, the opposite is the case. If I overly sanitize the Holy Family, or idealize it, then how can I hope to understand it as a real model family for our time?

The truth is that the scriptures offer us some very interesting images when it comes to the Holy Family.

Matthew’s gospel casts the Holy Family as a family of refugees. Subsequently he depicts them as a family living in an alien land, an immigrant family, as it were, before finally being able to return home. I wonder did Joseph have to take whatever work he could get while in Egypt? Despite his skills as a carpenter, or as a ‘tekton’ (the greek word used in the bible, literally meaning an ‘architect/builder’), did he struggle to find meaningful work for himself as he struggled to provide for his wife and child?

Luke’s gospel shares a different narrative, with the family relocating themselves to Nazareth, where Joseph labored to provide for his family. In this narrative, we are told that they are returning to their home place, where at least Joseph was known and perhaps respected. The couple would have lived in the company of extended family and friends as they tried to make a life for themselves. Joseph had his work, and Mary surely changed more than her fair share of diapers. Both had to manage the day-to-day affairs of family life and a household as surely as they had to work on growing deeper into their relationship with one another, as well as with God and coming to trust in his providence in their lives.

Setting aside pious notions about the Holy Family can go a long way toward helping us recognize that as surely as Mary and Joseph had their challenges and struggles, so we have our own. Family life always has been, and continues to be, an experience with particular challenges and opportunities. Our ancestors in faith have passed down some of their wisdom and insights to us. Despite the differences across the generations and cultural values, we begin to see that family life is interwoven with faith. When I was growing up as a young child, there was a campaign with the popular slogan “The Family that Prays Together, Stays Together”. It might sound ‘cute’, but the truth is that most studies today that endeavor to understand faith in the lives of youth and young adults consistently identify family as the consistent overarching ‘influencer’. Today’s youth and young adults overwhelmingly (90%) report that they “trust” and “feel close” to their parents. This is in stark contrast to more than 40% of teens in 1974 who thought they’d be better off without their parents! (cf Mercadante’s Engaging A New Generation p.53) Something good is happening in our families, even if we don’t necessarily do a good job of reflecting on what that “something good” is. We might take it a step further and reflect not only on the family dynamic, but also the implications for how we live faith in our families.

If we can conceive of Jesus, Mary and Joseph gradually figuring out how to best be family together, and learning how to make things work together, then perhaps we can appreciate with gratitude and awareness our own family’s figuring things out and learning how to make things work together? As they surely struggled, we shouldn’t be too surprised to encounter struggles in our own experiences. Perhaps we have more in common than we have previously thought?