The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (2025) - Fr Christopher Dowd, OP

Like the others feasts and celebrations that make up the Christmas season, the remembrance of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph gives us another opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the incarnation whereby the Eternal Word of God, the Son of God, who is God, came to live among us – and not just to live among us but to live among us as one of us and for all of us. In working the miracle of the Word made flesh God chose to become part of a human family, not just symbolically but really and truly. He did not just appear, out of the blue, as it were, but came to us and lived among us through a human family and through all the stages of human development, just like us.

More amazingly still, He was part of this family not as its head. He chose to be the junior partner, subject to the authority of His parents: His legal father, Joseph, and His natural mother, Mary. Almighty God, the creator, sustainer and governor of all that exists, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the source of all authority in heaven and on earth, submitted Himself in obedience to a merely human authority, an authority that ultimately came from Him. He placed Himself under the fourth commandment of the decalogue: honour your father and your mother. Jesus as Lord never asks us to do anything in the human sphere that He Himself is not prepared to do.

By doing this He endorsed family life. The family is an ancient natural arrangement, validated by time immemorial, but by its contact with the divine Child of Bethlehem it has also been consecrated and sanctified by God as a sure and effective means for the growth of the individual person in natural and supernatural virtue and, therefore, beneficial and indeed vital for the wellbeing of societies, peoples, and nations. Despite the stresses and strains of the last 50 years, chiefly in Western societies caused by the libertarian cultural revolution that began in the 1960s and continuing apace today, natural marriage, parenthood and family remain the basic building blocks of the human community and the common good. Despite the ill-considered attempt to redefine marriage for ideological purposes, marriage and family continue to be constituted by a husband and his wife and their children and relations. Catastrophically, many in our society are hostile to children, including agencies of the state, which sometimes takes the lethal form of abortion. Currently, we see a trend towards infanticide and the mutilation and disfigurement of our children through so-called sex re-assignment and gender fluidity. Despite all of that, our children remain our future.

Today’s feast shows how God sanctified and endorsed family life by actually becoming part of it; and yet we have to admit that the Holy Family of Nazareth was not what we would nowadays call conventional or normal, at least statistically. At the time of the birth of Jesus, Mary His mother was very likely a teenaged girl and a young one at that. Her husband was probably a few years older. There is no real reason to suppose that Joseph was an old man. This tradition in the church certainly helps to explain the perpetual virginity of Mary, in two ways: the brothers and sisters of Jesus referred to in the scriptures might have been the children of Joseph from a former marriage, and the old age of Joseph might have helped him to respect the virginity of his wife. There is a growing tendency in moral theology today, even regrettably proposed by some teachers in the Church, that sometimes the commandments of God are impossible to keep and that one may legitimately disregard them. That, of course, is false, perilously so. It is always possible to observe all the commandments of God – often difficult and challenging, yes, and sometimes we fail, yes, but God is prompt with His assistance, understanding and forgiveness. It is always possible under divine grace to do what God asks, and Joseph was a singularly graced man.

There were other peculiarities about the Holy Family. At the time of the conception of her baby, Mary was not married and Joseph was not the father. On the surface of it, this could be seen to be scandalous. Furthermore, Jesus was an only child – something very rare in those days. Even more startlingly, this child was the incarnate Son of God. The Holy Family was unique.

This is certainly not the sentimental, sugary portrayal of suburban family life that was broadcast in American television shows of the 1950s and 1960s such as ‘Father Know Best’ and ‘Leave it to Beaver’. The fact that the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph was not that kind of family should be an encouragement to those among us who might not be living in a typical family situation. Perhaps a marriage relationship is in trouble or has failed and husband and wife have gone their separate ways through no fault of one or both parties. Perhaps a spouse or parent has died and the other has been left alone. Perhaps an adolescent child has become alienated from his or her parents. Perhaps a child has died at a young age. Maybe someone is living away from his or her loved ones or homeland. Maybe someone is not married and is living alone or cannot marry because they have elderly parents to look after. Maybe a married couple is childless. The good news is that whatever kind of family you live in, or if you have no regular family, we all belong to the family of God our Father, Mary our mother, Jesus our brother and Joseph our protector. We all belong to the Holy Family of Nazareth.

The one thing that was definitely normal about the Holy Family was that it had its share of difficulties and problems, its stresses and fears. When Mary and Joseph went to the great Temple in Jerusalem to present their baby boy for the service of God they were confronted by the prophet Simeon who gave an ominous warning to Mary that her Child was going to be surrounded by rejection and crisis and a sword would pierce her own soul, too. And so it was. The Gospel for this Sunday’s Mass tells how this family had to flee into Egypt to escape the murderous intentions of King Herod. Mary and Joseph knew the anxiety of losing their boy 12 years later in the incident we know as the finding of the child Jesus in the temple. But before He was found He was lost. A missing child must be every parent’s nightmare. After Jesus began His public ministry, Mary and His other relatives were frantically worried about the trouble He was getting into. Joseph, the head of the household, had probably passed on by then. Finally, Mary stood at the foot of the cross on Mount Calvary in absolute grief as her crucified son was suspended above her, pouring out His blood for the life of the world. The Holy Family might not have been normal in the conventional sense of the word but like all families it knew trouble, crises and sorrow.

Nevertheless, it remains for us the ideal of family life – a life of belonging, of shared commitment and responsibility, of mutual support and assistance in times of joy and sadness, of understanding and care, tenderness and affection, peace and love. Above all, the Holy Family of Nazareth was the passageway through which the salvation of God reaches us, personified by the Infant of Bethlehem. The collect prayer for the feast says it all: O God, who were pleased to give us the shining example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practising the virtues of family life in the bonds of charity and so, in the joy of your house, delight one day in eternal rewards. Amen.

Fr Christopher Dowd, OP is is a lecturer in Church History at Catholic Theological College of the University of Divinity, and is assigned to St Dominic's Priory, Melbourne.