NAZARETH, GOD’S FAMILY - Introduction
Just as in the eternal mystery of God the Son is mirrored in the Father from whom he receives all things (Jn 5:26-27), the Father is mirrored in the Son in whom he delights and whom he invites to imitate (Mt 17:15); and just as every child learns to say, ‘I’, by being mirrored in the ‘you’ of his mother, in the radiance of her smile and in the tenderness of her breast and hands; so every family can grow in love by being mirrored in the Holy Family, the concrete ideal of every family. In it happens the most ordinary and at the same time most extraordinary fact: a family in which there is God, a home in which God dwells, which prolongs the mystery of the Incarnation, in which “the Word became flesh and came to dwell among us” (Jn 1:14).
In this small collection of meditations written to accompany Christian families to live the Advent and Christmas season well, we will go together to Nazareth to learn to love as God wants us to love, to prevent break-ups and find peace in family ties, to regulate affections and overcome resentments, to grow in the wisdom of earthly things in the light of the things of heaven: because, thanks to the gift of Jesus and Mary’s welcome, the things of earth were destined for heaven and those of heaven came down to earth.
The cue was offered to me by Pope Francis in a passage of the beautiful Apostolic Exhortation dedicated to the family, ‘Amoris Laetitia’. In it, every family is given the concrete and wonderful icon of the family of Nazareth. It is not an abstract and ideal icon, too heavenly and too perfect, far removed from common experience. Certainly, the experience of Joseph and Mary is singular and extraordinary, but it represents and realises the ideal to which all families can be inspired and aspire in a simple way, hosting Jesus and Mary in their homes, and invoking the intercession of Mary and Joseph for every need. In Mary’s home, we learn to love each other with the same love of God, and to face the trials of love with the humility, courage, patience and faith of the first ‘Christian family’! Let us enter into the mystery of Nazareth guided by the very concrete words, luminous and at the same time dramatic, of Pope Francis:
Every family is presented the icon of the family of Nazareth, with its everyday life made up of hardships and even nightmares, as when it had to suffer the incomprehensible violence of Herod, an experience that is tragically repeated even today in so many rejected and helpless refugee families. Like the Magi, the families are invited to contemplate the Child and the Mother, to prostrate themselves and adore Him (cf. Mt 2:11). Like Mary, they are exhorted to live their family challenges, both sad and exciting, with courage and serenity, and to treasure and ponder in their hearts the wonders of God (cf. Lk 2:19, 51). In the treasure of Mary’s heart, there are also all the events of each of our families, which she treasures. She can therefore help us interpret them to recognise God’s message in family history (AL 30).
As we can see, there is here the portrait of a holy family, because God is in it, but it is a real family, because it really lives in the world: as in every family, in the Holy Family too, there are dreams and nightmares, friends and enemies, riches and poverty, times of prayer and times of work; there is a family history that sustains and that weighs, that must be recognised and elaborated, to become capable of tracing God’s passages, his calls, the missions entrusted to us, the crosses that cannot be immediately understood but that in the meantime must be borne.
Fr Roberto Carelli - SDB
