Start in the Heart: Holy Family 2019
JMJ
*Note: this post was written on December 29,2019.
Today is the Feast of the Holy Family and a great way to start off 2020. Technically it’s still 2019, but this feast provides a vision for the year ahead.
A few years back, I decided to try and grow a closer in my spiritual life by blogging. I wrote on and off under the pseudonym One Catholic Guy.
After getting married, I wrote again, this time trying to see the world through Mary’s eyes. I called it “A Year of Marian thinking”. Well, like many New Years Resolutions, it wound up being “two to three uneven weeks of Marian thinking”. I wrote daily for the thirty one days of January on some issue in the world or something I noticed in the Gospel through Mary’s perspective.
Those reflections remained on my computer to be occasionally looked at but mostly are unread files. They did draw me towards a better understanding of Mary’s role in God’s plan and eventually to start praying the rosary.
So today, on the Feast of the Holy Family, I am starting a new mission — a year of reflecting on the Holy Family. How did the “school of Nazareth” form Jesus’ life and what can we learn from Jesus, Mary, and Joseph’s family life? It’s something on my heart this year as I’m hoping to be a father soon.
How do I guard my family like Joseph did? How do parents allow their child to see God as their Father so they may be “about their Father’s business”? How can we ponder our family life events and treasure them in our hearts to make them close to the Sacred Heart of Jesus?
I cannot promise to do a daily reflection. I couldn’t do it in 2017 and three years later I’m even less likely. So I had an idea. A once a week reflection, on Sunday, perhaps reading the Mass readings through the lens of the Holy Family. What does it look like? I have no idea! But I trust in the Holy Spirit to guide me.
Will I publish these? Again, no idea! (If you’re reading this, apparently it’s published).
Anyway, let’s start with today’s readings.
The second reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians made a big impact on me during mass this morning. The first thing I noticed was the list of virtues described for us to “put on”. “Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” (Col 3:12).
These traits are those necessary for a family to exist in harmony. What mother doesn’t feel with her whole heart for a suffering child? Who does not yearn for a gentle, patient, and loving relationship with their parents? But how many of us have that? I’d say a small minority of people. But why? Because we have not yet put on these qualities. Where are we putting them on from though? Truly from Christ Himself, and through His Gift to them, “holy and beloved”, His parents on earth.
The virtue that struck me most was “heartfelt compassion”. I recently was listening to a podcast that discussed the etymology of compassion as “suffering with”. Whose heart “suffered with” more that the Immaculate Heart of Mary for her son? God prepared her heart from before her conception, maintaining an immaculate and pure space for His infinite love to fill. Mary ponders the mysteries of Jesus’ young life in her heart.
St. Luke says several times that Mary treasures and ponders in her heart. We see at the Lord’s Presentation that Mary’s heart “too a sword shall pierce”. That is the beginning of her literally heart-felt suffering. It extends well beyond the days of Nazareth to the cross and the birth of the Church.
But what about St. Joseph? What do we hear from him regarding his heart. Well, firstly we hear nothing from him since he doesn’t say a word in scripture. There will surely be lots of reflection on that silence throughout this year! But back to the heart of the matter *rim shot*.
Seriously though- what about Joseph’s heart? Well most of the narrative of St. Joseph, echoing another earlier Joseph with amazing technicolor fashion sense, involves his dreaming. We could try and extrapolate where “dreams” are located but most would say it’s the head, not the heart. Even more particularly, the brain, not the head. And the brain can do weird things in dreams. But Saint Joseph’s dreams are not from his own mind, but the mind of God.
God sends angels to warn Joseph, fill him in on the major moments in salvation history, and tell Joseph when to flee to protect the Holy Family. And Joseph hears the word of God in the dreams and immediately obeys. But in one moment, we see something of Joseph’s heart. His very human, just like yours and mine, heart.
But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there.And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee. (Mt 2:22)
Joseph trust God entirely. He uprooted his entire life for God. He adjusted his plans for his family. He rises up and goes upon the dreams. But God allows him to worry in this moment. God does not rob Joseph, or we can assume his young bride, or the Holy Infant Jesus, of real human emotion. Joseph is scared.
What is he scared of? Politics. A mad man. A cruel son begotten of a terrible father.
Joseph is scared he cannot go home to Judea. This is where his ancestors are from. The home of Bethlehem, the city of David. How will Jesus fulfill this prophecy of being on the throne of David when he cannot even return to the cave of the manger? How can Joseph protect the child when Jerusalem, where they must worship, is overtaken by a ruler like Archelaus?
The angel told Joseph to rise and go to Israel so he did. But why didn’t the angel tell Joseph about Archelaus? I think it shows us something about Joseph’s heart.
God needed Joseph to trust Him entirely. God needs to show Joseph, in person, in the middle of the threat that could utterly destroy him, that God has a plan. Perhaps Joseph was so afraid in this place of terror that he couldn’t sleep. How many restless nights might the husband of Mary had for fear of Archelaus? How could he sleep when his child and wife were in danger? How could these refugees not fear for their lives and how could their protector lay down his head?
God needed Joseph to trust Him entirely. God needs to show Joseph, in person, in the middle of the threat that could utterly destroy him, that God has a plan.
But it’s only when Joseph lays down, powerless over so great a force, that God speaks to him. It’s only in his humility and patience that he can silently sleep, quieting the anxities of his mind and the worries of his heart. God then shows him his plan. That he will move to Nazareth. That God has a plan for him, from all time, to have His Son be called “a Nazorean”.
Joseph, Mary, and Jesus all experience the loves, joys, and sorrows of a family. Joseph in today’s Gospel shows how the righteous man can still be fragile. Our human nature is brought with inconveniences, worries, tragedies, and pains. We overcome it only by God’s grace. By “putting on” those virtues we started discussing in the second reading.
The father must learn from his newborn son, sleeping peacefully in His mother’s lap. Humble, gentle, patient, and most importantly, trusting. Totally dependent on His Father. And so the father, becomes a son of the one true Father, the one who speaks, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
The Holy Family today found a home, one that God had prepared for them from of old. A home their human hearts could not expect. As the first reading says, “a house raised in justice to you.” The new parents must take on the heart of their son and “and let the peace of Christ control your hearts,
the peace into which you were also called in one body.” (Col3:15).
One body, one young married couple, one family. May each of us be united to this Holy Family in the peace of Christ.
God love you!
