The Holy Family: Walking In Faith

This is the weekend we honor the Holy Family, the  family that we pray to, that we aspire to emulate.

We all know the Bible stories about them. Mary and Joseph are betrothed. Mary has a visit from Archangel Gabriel. Joseph has doubts, and Mary heads to see her also-pregnant cousin Elizabeth. Joseph receives an angelic visit.

Months later, the couple heads to Bethlehem for a census. Mary is very pregnant, and they can’t find a place to rest. They find a stable where Mary gives birth to the Messiah.

There are visits from angels and shepherds and Magi, and then the little family — carrying the Son — heads into unfamiliar, maybe dangerous territory, to escape the slaughter of the innocents. They carry with them the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, presented to them by kings from the East. Gifts which sustain them during their exile.

When the danger to their child has passed, the family returns to its homeland, and Joseph supports his wife and son working as a carpenter.

When Jesus is 12, His family travels to Jerusalem for the Jewish feast of Passover. When their group of pilgrims leaves, he remains. When Joseph and Mary  find Him, He is speaking with the elders in the Temple. He tells His parents, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”

We are told that at about age 30, Jesus enters His public ministry. His reputation grows and grows, and within three years He is honored as He enters Jerusalem.

Days later, He is scourged and with His mother standing at the foot of His cross, he dies.

One of my favorite passages about Mary is found in Luke 2. We are told that after she gives birth to Jesus, and after the visit from the shepherds, “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

She wasn’t very old when she was asked to give birth to “the Son of the Most High.” She responded “I am the Lord’s servant.”

And according to today’s standard, she wasn’t very old when she stood at Golgotha and watched her son’s life slip away.

When you read about Mary in the New Testament, there seems to be a serenity about her. A calmness. “Do whatever He tells you,” she tells the servants at Cana.

St. Paul encourages us in 2 Corinthians 5:7 to “walk by faith, not by sight.”

That’s what Joseph did when he accepted the Infant Jesus into his family and when he traveled to Egypt.

That’s what Mary did when she found her 12-year-old son discoursing with the elders in the Temple, and when she watched Him set out on His public ministry. She surely walked by faith those last days, when He was publicly humiliated, tortured and killed.

We do not know where she was after His death or when she first saw the Resurrected Christ. The Bible tells us that when Jesus arose He appeared first to Mary Magdalene. Over the centuries scholars have suggested that perhaps He appeared first to his precious mother.

In a general audience given on May 21, 1977, Blessed John Paul II said,

“Indeed, it is legitimate to think that the Mother was probably the first person to whom the risen Jesus appeared. Could not Mary’s absence from the group of women who went to the tomb at dawn (cf. Mk 16:1; Mt 28:1) indicate that she had already met Jesus? This inference would also be confirmed by the fact that the first witnesses of the Resurrection, by Jesus’ will, were the women who had remained faithful at the foot of the Cross and therefore were more steadfast in faith.

“Indeed, the Risen One entrusts to one of them, Mary Magdalene, the message to be passed on to the Apostles” (cf. Jn 20:17-18). Perhaps this fact too allows us to think that Jesus showed himself first to his Mother, who had been the most faithful and had kept her faith intact when put to the test.”

The pope added, “Lastly, the unique and special character of the Blessed Virgin’s presence at Calvary and her perfect union with the Son in his suffering on the Cross seem to postulate a very particular sharing on her part in the mystery of the Resurrection.”           

It’s conjecture, of course, and not Church teaching. One thing we do know: Joseph and Mary walked by faith.

Perhaps as we honor the Holy Family this weekend at the Liturgy, we should remember them in that way, and try to walk by faith ourselves.