On the first Sunday after Christmas or December 30 (depending on the year), the church remembers the Holy Family and the miraculously ordinary fact that God was born to a seemingly ordinary woman married to a seemingly ordinary man in an ordinary family. But by grace through faith, this woman and man were so much more. Pope John Paul II reflected on this when he said, “The Redeemer of the world chose the family as the place for his birth and growth, thereby sanctifying this fundamental institution of every society... The future of humanity passes through the family which in our time has been more marked than any other institution by the profound and rapid changes in culture and society. However, the Church has never ceased “to speak and offer her help to those who are already aware of the value of marriage and the family and seek to live it faithfully, to those who are uncertain and anxious and searching for the truth, and to those who are unjustly impeded from living freely their family lives.” (Angelus, 30 Dec. 2001)
“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” - G.K. Chesterton
O Lord Jesus Christ who, by being subject to Mary and Joseph, consecrated domestic life with ineffable virtues: we commend to your continual care the homes in which your people dwell. Put far from them every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy wedlock, have been made one flesh. Turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents; and so enkindle fervent charity among us all, that we may evermore be kindly affectioned one to another; through your name we pray. Amen.
Art & history by Ben Lansing
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