Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons: 30 December 2012

The Holy Family

Holy Family Sunday

The concept of happy families is one which permeates our romantic notions of culture, I’m not sure what it really means, is there ever a perfect family? I doubt it and even the Holy Family doesn’t give us quite the model we expect, for a start the description is certainly of an oddly matched couple, Joseph who is described as being a just man, but very troubled about Mary’s pregnancy, having to be prompted into careful action by the messengers of God, the angels coming in dreams.

The early history of this family is itinerant and refugee in status, the child born outside the normal home, the odd visitors to greet him, trouble with Herod so that the family had to flee into Egypt until the trouble was over. It is far from the ideal of a unified family grouping in contemporary sense, and yet it is a symbol and sign of the unfinished, roughhewn context of relationships amongst people.

The Holy Family is a model for us all simply because it does not fit into any neat categories and defies our attempts to try and put Mary, Joseph and Jesus into one format or context so that nobody, no church can ever claim them as their own, and yet everybody can.

The book of Ecclesiasticus has what at first seems one of those scriptural blueprints for ‘family life’ but it repays careful lectio divina. If you let the cadences seep into your mind another deeper images emerges, less the honour and obey in that patriarchal sense and much more the song of mutual respect and growing knowledge of each other, there is a reminder of rights in relationships and respect for the differences of temperament so that people are set at ease in each other’s company. It is much less the rod of discipline than the medicine of example, so be sympathetic to adversity and frailty in your family relationships, above all be kind.

Like you I think of my own wide family at this time, how across the generations there has been joy and heartache, understanding and conflict, for a family is only a microcosm of the larger human community, but I also know that when the chips are really down for somebody, people can prove to be compassionate and non judgmental. That comes with wisdom, knowing that families are only earth bound, in Christ we become linked to a greater family, God’s adopted children. Perhaps the real lesson of the Holy Family is not so much an exemplar of what we should be, rather what we should do, bear with one another, forgive one another and above all to put on love!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.