OUR HEAVENLY PATRON
The Holy Family consists of the Child Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph. Veneration of the Holy Family was formally begun in the 17th century by Saint Francois de Laval,the first bishop of New France, who founded a Confraternity.
The feast of the Holy Family is a liturgical celebration in the Catholic Church in honour of Jesus, his mother, and his legal father, Saint Joseph, as a family. The primary purpose of this feast is to present the Holy Family as a model of Christian families
The house of Nazareth is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to meditate, to penetrate the deepest meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God,drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The Holy Family is an icon of domestic church, which is called to pray together. The family is the first school of prayer where, from their infancy, children learn to perceive God, thanks to the teaching and example of their parents. An authentically Christian education cannot neglect the experience of prayer. If we do not learn to pray in the family, it will be difficult to fill this gap later. It is the place where we begin the journey towards holiness and become more fully human. The incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, became one of us. He was born into a human family. That was neither accidental nor incidental. There, in the holy habitation of the Nazareth, He forever transformed family life. Now, he teaches us how to live in his presence, if we will enrol in the 'School of Nazareth'. However, we need the eyes to see Him at work, the ears to hear his instruction and the hearts to make a place for him to dwell. In our family we can learn the way of selfless love by observing the Holy Family.
Jesus spent 30 of His 33 earthly years in Nazareth. Some spiritual writers have called these 'the hidden years'., because there is so little written about them in the Gospel narratives. However, they reveal the holiness of ordinary life and show us how it becomes extraordinary for those baptised into Christ. Every moment of His time among us Jesus was saving, redeeming and re-creating the world. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us,like us in all things except sin.
