The Holy Family,
Francisco de Zurbarán, 1659

Readings
Sirach 3:2-6,12-14
Psalm 128:1-5
Colossians 3:12-21
Luke 2:41-52

Chants

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).

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Saint Anthony of Padua
from 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.