God chose to enter into the world through a human family, entrusting his only Son to a young virgin named Mary, and Joseph, who was a carpenter and member of the House of David.
The Holy Family was formed when Mary and Joseph gave their consent to be the parents of the Son of God. They raised Jesus in the town of Nazareth, observing the faith, customs, and practices of the Jewish people.
Jesus’ humble obedience to his human parents sanctified the family and began his mission to reverse the disobedience of Adam and Eve.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are the image of what God intended a family to be, demonstrating the lifelong commitment and sacrificial love of husband and wife, the selfless devotion of parents, and the respectful submissiveness of children.
Although the Church dedicates major feast days to each individual member of the Holy Family, their life together is recognized as its own feast within the Octave of Christmas to highlight the connection with the Birth of Christ.
Catholics celebrate The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on the Sunday between Christmas (December 25) and the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God (January 1) unless both of those feast days fall on Sunday.
A Family like your family:
The Holy Family is real:
When the angels went away from them to Heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger.
Luke 2: 15-16
The family of Jesus deserves to be called holy:
Holy in spite of challenges:
Jesus’ family truly deserves the title “Holy”, for it was fully engaged in the desire to do the will of God, incarnate in the adorable presence of Jesus. On the one hand, it was a family like all others and as such, it is a model of conjugal love, collaboration, sacrifice and entrustment to divine Providence, hard work and solidarity in short, of all those values that the family safeguards and promotes, making an important contribution to forming the fabric of every society. At the same time, however, the Family of Nazareth was unique, different from all other families because of its singular vocation linked to the mission of the Son of God. With precisely this uniqueness it points out to every family and in the first place to Christian families God’s horizon, the sweet and demanding primacy of his will, the prospect of Heaven to which we are all destined.
Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 28 December 2008
God chose to be raised and to live in a family:
Held together by obedience and humility:
A model of Christian family virtues:
Christ chose to be born and grow up in the bosom of the Holy Family of Joseph and Mary. The Church is nothing other than “the family of God.” From the beginning, the core of the Church was often constituted by those who had become believers “together with all [their] household.” When they were converted, they desired that “their whole household” should also be saved. These families who became believers were islands of Christian life in an unbelieving world.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1655
Celebrating the Holy Family in Nazareth:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Finding the eternal in the everyday:
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