Who Is My Family?
Holy Family Scripture Readings
On this Feast of the Holy Family, we might wonder why the chronological narrative of the boy Jesus’s earliest years seems to be interrupted by this story of the child Jesus in the temple. The answer seems to be that this is the last time that Jesus’s father, Joseph, is shown taking an active role in Jesus’s life, so we see Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as a family. Yet, even here, Joseph is silent, and Mary does all the talking. Perhaps the role of Jewish mother was well-established even in antiquity.
We can learn several things about the Holy Family from this gospel. First of all, they are presented to us as religiously observant. The Law required three pilgrimages a year to Jerusalem for the Jewish population: the festivals of Passover, Pentecost, and Succoth (or the Feast of Booths). Those who lived at a great distance from the city were excused from the last two, but not the Passover obligation. So, the little family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph traveled on foot with the other faithful pilgrims from Nazareth the ninety miles to Jerusalem once a year at Passover time.
We also learn that Jesus was at least somewhat precocious. He was not yet thirteen—the age of maturity for Jewish boys—and yet he was already seen as a serious student of the Scriptures. In an age where few adults could read, he had obviously pursued his religious training passionately enough to be comfortable sitting at the feet of the learned temple rabbis of the time. He listened to them, asked them questions, and, as we might imagine in an old-fashioned catechism class, they tested his knowledge with questions and challenged him to think. Interestingly enough, his parents went on back home without him, while he stayed behind for several days, seemingly unconcerned about the situation. It shows the extraordinary value the boy put on this opportunity to learn from the experts.
Then, after three days—perhaps a deliberate prefiguring by Saint Luke of the three days in the tomb—Jesus returned with his parents to Nazareth. Although the gospel tells us that the boy was obedient to his parents, a fissure had already opened between him and them. He grew in the environment they provided for him. The gospel says that he grew in wisdom, age, and favor. Wisdom, which we also assume, means knowledge and understanding. And age, where the term means “stature,” which could mean both social and physical maturity. And in favor, which implied grace, spirituality, graciousness, tact, charm, or attractiveness. Yet, all of this was part of his launching pad into the spiritual master he was destined to become. The separation that began in the temple grew to maturity in Nazareth. It’s no wonder that Mary pondered how, from this very early age, he had already begun to withdraw from her to pursue his “father’s business.”
For centuries, the Holy Family has been held up to us Christians as a model for family life. Yet, little about the relationship between Jesus, Mary, and Joseph could be called “typical,” let alone, “ideal.” We have a prominent mother, a nearly invisible father, and a precocious and independent child. Commentators have built up pictures of an imaginary family life to try to make the Holy Family into what they considered the ideal family. They show us Jesus helping Joseph in his carpentry shop. Nice, but pure fantasy. Nothing like that would have existed because a carpenter at that time was a construction worker who built buildings. Furthermore, from a very young age, Jesus was highly educated in the Scriptures. By the time he was an adult, he could read, and he was generally recognized as a learned rabbi. That took a tremendous amount of time and effort. Besides, after that journey to Jerusalem when he was twelve, for whatever reason, Joseph disappears from the scene.
If the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph isn’t the prime exemplar of the ideal family, what is? In real life, families come in all shapes and sizes, colors, and conditions. Is it even possible to define “family,” since they come in so many flavors? People try to define family in terms of what’s called a “nuclear family” made up of a mother, a father, and one-point-nine-four children, all living in a single household. Whose family looks like that, after all? Others try to define family by what the institution provides for its members: protection, nurturing, support, example, and guidance, for instance. But again, whose family provided them with all that? On the contrary, what we experience is that nobody gets out of childhood unscathed. Most times, people grow into healthy adulthood despite the families they grew up in rather than because of them. I once heard a woman who was telling her life story. She began by saying, “I grew up in a dysfunctional family. But, since I’ve never yet encountered a functional one, I’ll leave it at that.” The reality is that families are motley collections of imperfect people trying to muddle through as best they can.
Perhaps that’s one reason why the so-called “family of origin” has fallen into such disrepute. Most of us, while not necessarily abandoning our “families of origin” have adopted families of choice. From the list of benefits that families are supposed to provide, our families of choice do a better job addressing our needs than our families of origin could … or would. This isn’t a bad thing. Even Jesus himself adopted a family of choice. “Someone told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are standing outside wanting to speak to you.’ He replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’” He went on to say, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” [Matthew 12:47-49]
The will of our heavenly Father is clear, that we should love one another as Jesus has loved us. And, that’s what creates family and that’s how we can recognize it: that the members, as diverse and imperfect and difficult as they may be, are united with one another by bonds of self-sacrificing love, the bonds of love we call agapē, that go above and beyond mere bloodlines. After all, was Jesus related by blood to his father, Joseph? It’s that special kind of love that binds a group of people together regardless of circumstances that creates family, a love that’s empowered by God’s grace. So, when we look at our support systems and the people from whom we draw and provide support and guidance, we see family. Perhaps the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—a family bonded together by the love of God—is a model for the ideal family, after all.
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