Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
The Feast of the Holy Family is, first and foremost, a celebration of the holy reality of the family. It is important for us to constantly remind ourselves that, despite the infinite number of possible options, Christ chose to come to us in a very specific way. God always acts intentionally with deep reason, wisdom, and purpose for our ultimate benefit. He didn’t have to come as a child. He didn’t have to be born into a family. If He had so chosen, Christ could easily have descended into Jerusalem in a nuclear blast of glory and started proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom. But He didn’t.
Jesus, Emmanuel, “God with us”, chose to be born as a member of the human family. More than this, however, He chose to have a mother and a father, and He specifically chose Mary and Joseph for these roles. This was not a random occurrence. God doesn’t do random. Christ ordered his coming in order to bless, validate, and confirm the inherent goodness and necessity of the family as the basic unit of a healthy, rightly ordered society. The family is not a human creation. It is a system of relationship that has been divinely established and ordained for our highest good. The institution of rightly-ordered family is a gift of God’s divine love to provide for our most fundamental daily and developmental human needs as we support one another in striving for the Kingdom of God.