Why the "Holy Family"?

When I was a Protestant, we did not have the concept of the "Holy Family". The idea was just glaringly absent. Why? I suppose that it was because, on the Protestant view I was inculcated, they were not holy. No one but Jesus, that is. Jesus was holy. Mary and Joseph, not so much.

What about "father" Abraham?

Holy

What about Joseph in the Old Testament?

Holy

What about Moses?

Holy

What about...

Moses: A Much More
Seemingly Fantastic Story

You get the picture. There were the heroes of the faith, or what we might call those "set apart" (the greek meaning of the word "holy"). They were the great "cloud of witnesses", whom we held in high esteem, respected for their faith, virtue and courage. In some weird kind of western, post-"enlightened" vantage, we imagined that press-time in the Bible equaled importance for God and so we re-arranged our priorities. Moses got about 10 out of the 22 weeks of Sunday school, Mary 1/4 of a day. Then again, the cult of the Bible was bound to lead to such conclusions. Why would God give so little page space to Mary but so much to Moses? Is not Moses more important than Mary?

This kind of quantitative reductionism, besides being less than erudite, is spiritually blind and inept. It fails to consider that the Scripture is a telling of salvation history--not a catechism--written in almost strictly narrative form, and that the climax of any story should always get more attention than the rest. It is the point of a story, right? The climax.

The climax of salvation history begins with the Holy Family. It is the complete undoing of the sin of the garden. If in creation we learn one thing, we learn that God desired a family--and so we exist. Subsequently, he granted us a share in the divine life and allowed us to "make man in our image in likeness"--so to speak (I got 4 of them so far!). Yet from the beginning, even without children, we were making complete fools out of ourselves. Conspiracy, murder, devilry, you name it, the first family was a picture of disfunction. This disfunction unfolds in our own history, and replays, sometimes getting worse, while at other times acquiescing to that which is still noble in us. Yet, the story is still the same: failure, sin and grabs for inordinate power that lead to ordinary powerlessness.

The New First Family

So enters the Holy Family. On this feast, as a Catholic, I am reminded that the garden is not to be my fixed point of reference. No. The Second Adam came to re-fix my gaze. He not only heals the blind eyes, He gives them a new picture of life! Where shall we find this life? None other than in the Holy Family! A father--nobel, courageous, quiet and strong, a mother--spotless, listening, praying, full of nurture, and a Son--who draws heaven and earth together in the ineffable mystery of the unicity of His nature. It is a great tragedy to miss this family--especially for those who love the Savior. It is likened unto one who is healed by Him, only to fix one's eyes back on the first garden. For we will always have but one of two choices: the garden or Nazareth.

We like the garden because it reminds us so much of ourselves.

Yet in the stable, fleeing to Egypt, and at the temple, we see the Holy Family. The entire story climaxes in this famille petite. We want something big, something epic, and so we fix our eyes on Moses, Elijah, or someone else. Do not get me wrong, they are important, but if you do not understand how in The Story this small family huddled around a babe in swaddling clothes is the raison d'etre, you have yet to fix your eyes beyond the garden--which is ultimately to say that you have not stopped gazing at your own navel. Even more, while your gaze was there--at the garden, you did not hear the Lord say:

"I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel."-Genesis 3:15

The entire story between this moment and the moment the Holy Family appears can be summed in this verse. It was merely a lying in wait. Wait and see for what?

I think you know the answer.

It all started with a family set a part for the climax of His-tory. 

Holy Family, pray for us!