This article first appeared in Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.
Have you ever stepped back and reflected on your life only to realize that it seems to lack anything resembling peace? The pace of your work and social engagements is frenetic, your tensions with your spouse are mounting, your children seem to push your buttons with incredible success and most days you don’t seem to have enough time even to lift your thoughts to God, let alone spend time in prayer.
If this picture sounds familiar, it’s important not to give in to discouragement. A helpful model can be found in the pages of Scripture: The Holy Family not only serves as an example of how to face difficulties, Mary and Joseph can also be powerful intercessors in our moments of need.
The trials of the Holy Family
In his 2015 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (“On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World”), Pope Francis pointed out how the Holy Family “reflected in an exemplary way the beauty of the Trinitarian communion” (No. 143). The Holy Family thus clearly presents us with a model to follow. However, we can easily fall into the trap of thinking that the Holy Family is so exemplary that everything came easy for them. I mean, after all, Jesus, God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity and creator of all that exists, was the very heart of the Holy Family. If God incarnate dwelt in my home, wouldn’t my family life be perfect too? Even if we exclude Jesus, just for a moment, we can point out that the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was singularly conceived without original sin and who never committed any actual sins, was the mother of this home. Of course peace must have reigned there. Or we can look to St. Joseph and think, the Holy Family had one of the holiest saints as father of the household. No wonder they experienced such a perfect earthly harmony.
If we think in these terms, we gloss over the salient aspects of what sacred Scripture tells us about the Holy Family. In the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (18-19), we read:
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.
At the very outset of the Holy Family’s existence as a communion of persons involving Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we find a pregnant, unwed mother and an almost-husband ready to divorce his wife! Talk about challenges to harmony within the family!
Technically, in the context of the Second Temple Judaism of Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s day, Mary and Joseph were more than engaged, but neither were they yet fully married. They were “betrothed,” which was the beginning of the marriage process, far enough along that, in order to leave her, Joseph would have to get a formal writ of divorce from the local religious authority, but incomplete enough that the two of them could not dwell under the same roof. Mary’s pregnancy presented a number of challenges for the Holy Family at its very outset. If an unwed pregnancy is a challenge in today’s culture, you can imagine how much of a challenge it was in a religious culture that demanded the death penalty for adultery (see Lv 20:10), even if the Jewish authorities of Jesus’ day were unable legally to mete out the capital punishment under the Roman Empire.
The other challenge related to this is that Mary seems to have made a vow of “self-affliction” (see the vows of Numbers 30) involving celibacy even in marriage. Thus, despite the fact that Mary was betrothed to Joseph, she had only one concern after the angel Gabriel appears to her with this extraordinary announcement (Lk 1:30-33):
Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.
Although this English translation includes the word “now,” the Greek text only uses the future tense for when Mary will conceive. There is no marker of time other than that conveyed by the future tense. In other words, at this point all Mary knows is that at some undetermined time in the future she will conceive and bear a son. This would likely be the least shocking of revelations for an ordinary young Jewish woman currently in the process of marrying her husband. Certainly, it would be less shocking than the revelation that her son “will be great,” that he “will be called Son of the Most High,” that God will give “him the throne of his ancestor David” and that “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And yet Mary’s only concern is that she would seemingly have to have sexual relations for this to take place: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Lk 1:34).
The only explanation for this, in light of the facts that she is in the process of getting married and that the angel has not yet told her when in the future this conception will happen, is that Mary intended to remain a virgin after she is formally married to Joseph, as before their marriage. How can Mary keep her vow to God? The angel provides the answer in that the child will be of the Holy Spirit (1:35). This presents its own challenges. Not only will she, for a time, be pregnant yet unwed, but she will have to raise a child who is none other than God himself!
This was Joseph’s great fear in Matthew 1. He was willing to divorce her over this, until the angel made it clear to him that God had selected St. Joseph precisely to raise Jesus.
The challenges the Holy Family faced did not end there; this was only the beginning. St. Luke informs us that, when Mary was ready to give birth to Jesus, they had to make the difficult and dangerous trek from Nazareth in the north all the way down to Bethlehem in order to be enrolled in a census (2:1-6). This must have been tremendously difficult for Mary, nearing the end of her pregnancy, and for St. Joseph, who would have been able to do so little to comfort her during the journey. And if this difficult journey at the end of her pregnancy were not challenging enough, “there was no place for them in the inn” (2:7). We know the story so well from our annual celebrations of Christmas that sometimes we forget what a real challenge and hardship this must have been.
Thus, Jesus, when he entered the world after his birth, was wrapped in swaddling cloths and put to rest “in a manger” (2:7) where animals fed. The Holy Family experienced poverty that night, like so many families around the world. At Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, they heard the prophecy of Simeon that the infant would become “a sign that will be opposed” (2:34) and, to Mary, that “a sword will pierce your own soul too” (2:35). These are not comforting words.
No sooner had Jesus been born than the local ruler, King Herod, sought to kill him. Imagine St. Joseph’s reaction when the angel appeared to him again, this time with the words, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him” (Mt 2:13). This must have been a terrifying ordeal. Joseph, tasked with protecting the Blessed Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus, wasted no time traveling to a foreign country to begin life all over again. As a skilled worker, tekton in Greek, perhaps a carpenter as tradition often depicts him, Joseph had to start from scratch in a new country while trying to support his family.
Even later, near the end of his childhood, long after the Holy Family had returned to Nazareth, they lost Jesus on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover (Lk 2:41-51). Yes, the Holy Family was holy, but they were beset with challenges to harmony every step of the way.
Imitating the Holy Family
What lessons can we take from the Holy Family in thinking about our own challenges in family life and at work?
First of all, we can see that Jesus is at the very center of the life of the Holy Family. We have to invite him to be at the center of our life and of our family too. This will take different forms in the different contexts in which we live and work, but fundamentally, it will involve prayer.
As we seek to grow closer to Jesus, we should imitate him in remaining close to Mary and Joseph. The Blessed Virgin Mary can be for us a strong advocate as we strive for harmony in our own lives. Joseph, patriarch of the Holy Family, can be the head of our family as well. In this way, Jesus, Mary and Joseph can become our patrons as we pursue the peace God wills for us.
At a practical level, we can also see how Mary and Joseph put God first in all that they did. They obeyed the will of God with alacrity. Once Mary understood what the Lord was asking of her, she gave her fiat: “let it be with me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). St. Joseph also responded immediately to the angel’s commands, not only to take Mary into his home, but also to flee with her and the infant Jesus into Egypt. All of these responses took tremendous courage. Whatever the Lord is asking of us, it will come with challenges, and we can ask for the Holy Family’s intercession to grant us the courage we need.
Striving for peace does not mean the absence of difficulties or challenges; the Holy Family is facing difficulties and challenges every time we encounter them in Scripture. Rather, it entails living out the virtue of charity such that we work for the good of the others we encounter, loving God above all things. With the Holy Family as our model and guide, we can bring harmony into our lives despite the quarrels, busyness and messiness that invariably arise. In this way, we will experience the peace that Christ came to give, and we will become the ambassadors of Christ that we are called to be.
