Feast of the Holy Family 2016
In this Gospel, the Holy Family went to Jerusalem for the Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Christ because He had reached the age required to become a “Son of the Law.”  This was the moment when a Jewish boy would take on the responsibility of an adult.  For Our Lord it meant that He officially and juridically became the public and formal representative of God, His Heavenly Father.  The reason Christ stayed in the Temple was because from that moment the Temple was His true home.  Our Lord’s “Father’s business” was liturgical worship.  The actions of Christ are a clear lesson to us that our obligations to Almighty God exceed all other obligations, even those towards our family.  When the Gospel says that “He advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God,” it means that as His humanity developed, He manifested more perfectly His wisdom and perfections.
This feast was instituted as a defense against the attacks on the family, and to combat the errors taught about the family’s purpose in society. It teaches us the sublimity of the passive virtues of family life: silence, humility, and fidelity to duty.  These virtues, so often scorned by the world, are the very foundation of a holy human existence.
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