For most of His life – 30 out of 33 years – Jesus lived a quiet life in Nazareth. The Gospels tell us very little about those years. Of course there are the accounts of His birth in Bethlehem, the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt and returning to Nazareth when the Angel told Joseph it was safe, and there is the account of finding Jesus in the Temple when he was about 12 and got left behind. Other than those few instances, we know nothing about Jesus’ life in Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. Some scholars refer to these as the “hidden years.”
While the exact details of the day-to-day life of the Holy Family may be unknown, we can still learn a lot from the stories we do have. And that time also reveals the holiness of ordinary life. From the Holy Family our own Christian family can learn the way of selfless love.
Devotion to the Holy Family is actually a rather recent development in the history of the Church. It grew naturally out of a love for Jesus and His family. The cult of the Holy Family grew in popularity during the 17thcentury. It was not until October, 1921 that the Feast of the Holy Family was inserted into the General Liturgical Calendar in the Latin Rite. Up until 1969 the Feast was celebrated on the first Sunday after the Epiphany. In 1969 it was transferred to its current date: the Sunday that falls between Christmas and the Feast of Mary the Mother of God (New Years). If Christmas and New Year are both on a Sunday, then the Feast of the Holy Family is celebrated on December 30.
The main purpose of the Feast is to present the Holy Family as the model for all Christian families. Our family life becomes sanctified when we live the life of the Church within our homes. St. John Chrysostom urged all Christians to make each home a “family church.”
So how do we live out the Church in our family? The most important thing is to make Christ the center of family life. Ways to do this include reading Scripture regularly, praying daily, attending Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, imitating the actions of the Holy Family, going to confession regularly. But we need to do these things as a family.
Pope Paul VI, when he visited Nazareth in 1969 called the Holy Family the “School of Nazareth.” What do we learn in the “School of Nazareth”? In an audience address in 2011, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI spoke eloquently about this: “Th house of Nazareth is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to meditated, to penetrate the deepest meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God, drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The Holy Family is an icon of the domestic Church, which is called to pray together. The family is the first school of prayer where, from their infancy, children learn to perceive God thanks to the teaching and example of their parents. An authentically Christian education cannot neglect the experience of prayer. IF we do not learn to pray in the family, it will be difficult to fill this gap later. I would, then, like to invite people to rediscover the beauty of praying together as a family, following the school of the Holy Family of Nazareth.”
In the words of St. John Paul II, I pray that this year, all of our families “become what you are,” a domestic Church.