Holy Family, Suffering Family

There is a reason why we form children as much with images as with words. Images can be a powerful teacher. When I was growing up, my family had an image of the Holy Family that hung on our wall. When I was still very young, I remember asking my mother about it: “Who are they?” I asked. She responded: “That’s the Holy Family: Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.”

I think that image fascinated me because I could see that my family looked something like the Holy Family. My dad was like Joseph, my mom was like Mary, I was like Jesus, and best of all my little sister and brother didn’t fit in at all! That picture told me something about what God intended my family to be like, and when I didn’t go along with that – when, for example, I was mean to my sister and brother – it was as if I could feel that image of the Holy Family urging me to be better.

Today’s Feast of the Holy Family has a similar purpose. We can see in the Holy Family the purpose God has for family life: a community of persons formed and united in love. God intends the family to be the basic unit of human society, founded on the self-gift of spouses united by marriage and ordered to the good of their children, raising them and educating them in virtue. In the family home, the fruits of love and joy and peace are born forth: taught, learned, and shared.

Sadly, we know that our human families often fall short of that ideal. When we experience tragedy or difficulty, the Holy Family may sometimes feel like a distant ideal, very far removed from the reality of our own family lives. Perhaps today’s feast even causes us pain, as we compare the Holy Family with our own family’s sufferings and shortcomings. But lest we think that the life of the Holy Family was completely idyllic, the Gospel today reminds us that they were not immune to suffering. When Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, the righteous man Simeon prophesies to them that their Child will be the glory of Israel, a light to all the nations. But he also tells them he will be a sign of contradiction – words that were proven true true when he was rejected, arrested, tortured, and murdered. And Simeon tells Mary that she too will be pierced by "a sword" – not a physical suffering and death, like her Son, but the spiritual cross of experiencing his death with him.

The Scene of Christ in the Temple (1516) by Fra Bartolommeo

Today’s Gospel tells us quite pointedly that suffering was right at the heart of the Holy Family. Consider the other things we know the other very difficult things they experienced: Mary was called to become the Mother of the Savior at a young age; Joseph was called to accept a woman pregnant with a Child that he knew was not his; they were forced to give birth in humble circumstances, far from their own land; they had to flee to Egypt because a king wanted to murder their son; Mary and Joseph even lost Jesus for three days on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. All of these experiences would have been difficult, most of them traumatic, and yet all of them are merely a prelude to what comes later: Christ’s own passion and death.

What sustained the Holy Family in their trials? The same thing that can sustain us and our families when we suffer: grace. God allowed the Holy Family to suffer because it too was part of the mystery of redemption for which he sent his Son. That mystery of redemption culminates in Christ's cross, which is also the font from which every grace is given. In this way it was fitting that Jesus's family would experience suffering, since his own suffering was the source by which they also lived in grace. 

In other words, Jesus was born into our world to redeem every part of the human experience, and that includes the lived experience of the family. For our families to also experience his redemption, we will also experience the mystery of redemptive suffering. Sometimes that suffering comes from outside the family – e.g., death, illness, infertility, debt, unemployment – and sometimes it comes from within – e.g., marital strife, abuse, infidelity, addictions, loneliness, resentments, abandonment, and more. In all of it though, the grace of Christ can be made present. God can give to our Christian families the grace we need not only to endure the sufferings that come but to give witness in them to his Son, through our faith, hope, and love. It is for this reason that the Christian family can often be a place of both great love and great suffering – but never suffering hopeless or meaningless, but always suffering that can bring forth even greater love through the power of grace.

Friends, I hope you have an image of the Holy Family in your own homes; if you don’t, consider getting one. It can be a great way of forming your children, your grandchildren, and even yourselves – not just as a model to strive for but as a reminder of the power of grace in the midst of suffering. Just as God sustained the family of Nazareth by his grace so too he can sustain yours, but always in the degree to which you seek to unite your lived experience – whether as spouses, as parents and grandparents, as sons and daughters – to that of Jesus, and that is true especially for your sufferings.

As we continue our Christmas celebrations, may the grace of this Eucharist renew us so that we can help make alive again the mysteries of faith, hope, and love in our family lives.