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We are in Epiphanytide. As you know, Epiphany is from a Greek term for “manifestation”. The Feast was especially important in the ancient Eastern Churches. Traditionally it celebrated especially three manifestations of the divinity of Christ, namely, the Adoration of the Magi (frankincense being a symbol of divinity), the Lord’s Baptism by John (the bridge between the Lord’s private life and His public ministry when the Father’s voice was heard), and the Wedding at Cana (His inaugural public miracle). In the Roman Church on Epiphany the antiphon for Vespers mentions these three mysteries, each introduced with “Hodie…today”:
We honor this holy day decorated with three miracles: today the star led the Magi to the manger; today at the marriage wine was made from water; today Christ deigned to be baptized by John in the Jordan that he might save us. Alleluia.
In the first part of the Season of Epiphany, these three miraculous events are teased out for their own liturgical reflection: on 6 January Epiphany, the Magi – at the octave, 13 January, the Lord’s Baptism – on the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, the Wedding at Cana which in John 1 and 2 is the “octave” of the Baptism.
In the Vetus Ordo for this Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. In the Novus Ordo, this Sunday would be the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
The 20th century the Czech-born liturgical writer Fr. Pius Parsch (+1954), a Canon Regular of Klosterneuburg Abbey in his multi-volume The Church’s Year of Grace, writes that the Feast of the Holy Family was intended to improve family life in the wake of World War One. Before that, this Sunday was associated with the Octave of Epiphany, which was rashly suppressed along the way. One thing that ties the older Mass formula with Holy Family in the Vetus Ordo is that they both have for the Gospel reading the episode in Luke 2:41-52 about the finding of the Lord in the Temple.
An aside. Since you know the story of the Gospel well already, or you can easily open your nearby Bible and find it (Luke 2:42-52), the “caravan” that the Holy Family would have travelled with to and from Jerusalem is called in Greek a synodía. See! “Walking together!” But the Lord wasn’t “walking together”, was He? He left aside His earthly business with His earthly parents, and didn’t “walk together” until He was “about His Father’s business”. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” (Matt 6:33) Perhaps that should be the model of “synodality”.
We learn from Luke 2:42 that when Joseph and Mary took their Son and went to Jerusalem on that Passover, according to the Law (Ex 23:14-17), Jesus was 12 years old. This is a historical fact, of course, but it also would have made our forebears who knew their Scripture make a connection with the Judge and Prophet Samuel, who was also 12 when he was in the service of the Tabernacle (before the Temple was built). Furthermore, in 1 Sam 2:26 we read that Samuel “continued to grow in both stature and in favor with the Lord and with men”. In Luke 2:52, after the Holy Family returned to Nazareth, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.” Moreover, Samuel was born after her hitherto infertile mother Hannah prayed to God. Hannah prayed something much like the Magnificat that Mary proclaimed when she visited Elizabeth: “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in the Lord (1 Sam 2:1).” Luke established the prophetic office the Lord right away in his Gospel.
The separation of Samuel from his family for service to God in the Temple’s precursor, the Tabernacle, and the separation of the Lord from His Family to be in the Temple also mark the expansion of the idea of family. When Joseph and Mary find Jesus in the Temple, he tells them (and the Greek is subtler than the English), that “I must be in my Father’s house”. However, the Greek doesn’t have the word “house”. It says, ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου δεῖ εἶναί με – en tois tou patros mou dei einai me … I must be in my father’s”. “In my father’s”… what? In his concerns, business, affairs, belongings, interests, purposes. Whatever it is that concerns the Father. Sometimes this is translated as “be about my father’s business” (v.49). Sometimes it is “be in my Father’s house”, which reminds us of what we read in John 19:27 on Calvary when the Apostle from that hour took Mary “to his own home”. The Greek word for “house” doesn’t appear there either. Instead, the Greek uses ídia, from ídios being “pertaining to self”. The Greek says, “élaben autèn … eis tà ídia … he took her… into ‘his own’ care, possession, belonging, ‘house’”.
In any event, at the time of the Finding of the Lord, Mary and Joseph didn’t get what He was saying. We read that “his mother kept these things in her heart”, as she did at the time of the Annunciation.
A first point to take away: Mary pondered, weighed, remembered and reflected. Joseph didn’t speak. The Lord went with them, and hypotassómenos autoís, “he was subject to them.” And so we surmise it was thus until the Lord began His public ministry. At some point before, David’s descendent Joseph will have drawn his last breath and Jesus would be the proper heir of David, the true King, Priest and Prophet.
Each in their own way, Mary, Joseph and Jesus, were “subject”. They obeyed the Law, there was hierarchy in the home. There was unbounded charity, in which each person is deeply subject to the other because the good of the other is always in the fore. Hence, were we to have a glimpse of Holy Family life, we can without fault imagine it to be one of great unity, calm joy, prayerfully focused work according to proper roles, devout spoken prayer and times of silent prayer and meditation. Does that seem reasonable given who was involved?
Charity is a sine qua non in a family. As hard as it is at times, it should at least be a goal toward which progress is made individually and collectively.
While in the context of our families there is sure to be activity and bustle and noise, there must also be in the family home – the domestic Church – times for silence, and not just at night when everyone is asleep. There must be time for prayer and for quiet reflection.
One might consider well and often what family means. Clearly the Lord wanted to expand His idea about family, in Matthew 12:48-50 (and Mark 3:31-34):
Stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.
However, as far as the nuclear family is concerned – an institution and societal building block designed by God, widely disintegrating under the attacks of the Enemy and his earthly agents – we would not be wrong to ponder Paul’s words about the inner dynamics and harmony of the family found in the Epistle reading for this Sunday’s Mass. The whole thing (RSV):
[Brethren]: Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
The Holy Family is surely a good model which can inspire us all, especially in Catholic families which have such great advantages in the sacraments. Practically speaking, as well, we have Paul’s concrete teaching. Each member of a family should be taught about each members responsibilities and, as each “grows in wisdom and knowledge” ponder how one’s role and vocation is maturing.
Lastly, I’ll close with an admonition of Fr. Troadec in his book, From Epiphany to Lent:
Happy the families where the father hands down to his children the solid principles of life, and where the mother fosters in their souls a goodness that unfolds beneath the gentle sunshine of her gaze, so pure, so loving, so self-forgetful! Happy the families where the man is the lord, and the woman is the angel! What a constant ascension of virtue, of esteem, of nobility do we see in these blessed homes! O my Jesus, help me to understand the exact place that Thou wantest me to occupy in my family, and help me to fulfill it well.