The Feast of Holy Family it is celebrated on the Sunday following Christmas. If Christmas has already shown us the Holy Family gathered in the Bethlehem cave, today we are invited to contemplate it in the little house of Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph are intent on raising the child Jesus, day after day.
We can easily imagine her (artists have often done this) in a thousand situations and attitudes, putting then the foreground or the Holy Virgin next to her Child, or the good Saint Joseph in the carpenter’s shop where the child also learns human work by playing.
What is the history of this holiday?
The feast of the Holy Family in the Catholic liturgy was celebrated locally in the 17th century; Pope Leo XIII in 1895 fixed it on the third Sunday after the Epiphany “omnibus potentibus”, but it was Pope Benedict XV who in 1921 extended it to the whole Church, fixing it to the Sunday included in the octave of the Epiphany; Pope John XXIII moved it to the first Sunday after the Epiphany; currently it is celebrated on the Sunday after Christmas or, alternatively, on 30 December in years in which Christmas falls on a Sunday.
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Holy Family with the Dog, 1650
Why was it established?
The celebration was established to give an example and an impulse to the institution of the family, the cornerstone of social and Christian life, taking as reference the three characters that composed it, exceptional figures yes but with all the characteristics of every human being and with the problems of every family.
First of all, the three people who made it up: Mary, chosen among all creatures to become the co-redemptrix of humanity, which however presupposed her assent with the Annunciation of the archangel Gabriel.
Her marriage followed with the righteous Joseph, according to God’s plans and according to Jewish law; and preserving her virginity, she felt the signs of pregnancy with the Visitation to s. Elizabeth, until becoming with motherhood, the mother of the Son of God and mother of all men.
And it was her turn to raise the Divine Child with all the care of a normal mother, but with in her heart the great responsibility for the task entrusted to her by God and the pain of what the old Simeon had prophesied to her during the presentation in the Temple: a sword will pierce your heart. Finally, before the public life of Jesus, we find her mentioned in the Gospels, which recalls Jesus, now twelve years old, who had stopped in the Temple with the doctors, while she and Joseph had been searching for him in anguish for three days.
Who was Saint Joseph?
Joseph is the other member of Jesus’ family, not much is known about him; the Gospels tell of his engagement to Mary, the angel’s warning of the future motherhood desired by God, with the invitation not to repudiate her, his marriage to her, his move with Mary to Bethlehem for the censusthe episodes connected to the birth of Jesus, in which Joseph was always present.
It was he who was warned in a dream by an angel, after the adoration of the Magi, to save the Child from the persecution unleashed by Herod the Great and Joseph, protecting his family, led them to safety in Egypt. After the death of the wicked king, he returned to Galilee and settled in Nazareth; he still fulfilled Jewish law by taking Jesus to the Temple for circumcision, offering some turtledoves and doves for presentation.
Tradition says he is a carpenter, but the Gospel designates him as a craftsman; he is still mentioned in the sacred texts, who leads Jesus and Mary to Jerusalem, and here with great apprehension he loses Jesus, who was twelve years old, finding him after three days discussing with the doctors in the Temple; having returned to Nazareth, as the Gospel says, the Child grew and became stronger, full of wisdom and the grace of God was upon him. Nothing else is known about him, not even about his death, which probably occurred before the public life of Jesus, that is, before the age of 30.
We do not know how many years passed with the Holy Family reduced without Joseph, who, if he was not present in the years of Christ’s public life, nor at his Passion and death and in subsequent events, his figure in Christianity, spread in a cult increasingly growing, in the East since the 5th century, while in the West it has been growing since the Middle Ages, developing especially in the 19th century; he is invoked to have a good death, the name Joseph is among the most used in Christianity.
Pius IX proclaimed him patron saint of the whole Church in 1870; in 1955 Pius XII established the feast of Saint Joseph the craftsman on May 1st; since 1962 his name has been included in the canon of the Mass.
Rembrandt, The Holy Family
What is known about Jesus’ childhood?
The third person in the family is Jesus; with his presence it becomes the Holy Family; practically nothing is known about his childhood either; He, the Son of God, lives in the secrecy of his earthly family, obedient to his mother and father, collaborating as an adult in Joseph’s workshop, wonderful example of humility. He certainly assisted his foster father in his old age and death, as all good sons do, very obedient to his mother, now a widow, to the point of performing his first public miracle at the wedding at Cana at her request.
Rembrandt, Holy Family with Angels, 1645
The Holy Family in art
The Holy Family has always been a very inspired subject in the imagination of artists, the greatest painters of all centuries have wanted to depict it in its various expressions of the Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, Flight into Egypt, in the craftsman’s workshop (carpenter), etc.
The iconographic theme has largely inspired the artists of the Renaissance, it is generally composed of Mary, Joseph and the Child or from Saint Anna, the Virgin and the Child.
The best known representations are that of Masaccio with s. Anna and that of Michelangelo with s. Giuseppe, better known as Tondo Doni. Worth mentioning in the sculptural and architectural field is the “Sagrada Familia” of Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona.
Numerous religious congregations, both male and female, are named after the Holy Family, mostly founded in the 19th and 20th centuries; such as the “Sisters of the Holy Family”, founded in Bordeaux in 1820 by the abbot PBNoailles, also known as the ‘Sisters of Loreto’; the “Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth” founded in 1875 in Rome, by the Polish Siedliska; the “Little Sisters of the Holy Family” founded in 1892 by Blessed Nascimbeni in Castelletto di Brenzone (Verona); the “Priests and brothers of the Holy Family” founded in 1856 in Martinengo by Blessed Paola Elisabetta Cerioli; the “Sons of the Holy Family” founded in 1864 in Spain by José Mananet and many others.
