The daily life of the Holy Family

St Therese of Lisieux wrote on this subject, in her magnificent poem to Mary (1):

"I know, indeed, at Nazareth, O Virgin rich in graces!

As the lowly live, so thou didst live, and sought no better things;

Of ecstasies and wonders there, our eyes can find no traces,

O thou who daily dwelt beside the incarnate King of Kings!

On earth, we know, is very great the number of the lowly;

With neither fear nor trembling now we dare to look on thee.

By common lot and humble path, our Mother dear and holy,

Thou wast content to walk to heaven, and thus our guide to be."

Mary and Joseph kept quiet about the extraordinary virginal conception of their Divine Son, born of the Virgin Mary. The ritual of engagement and marriage had been respected. Jesus Himself remained silent about his double nature - human and divine- until the beginning of His predication when he was thirty years old. The Holy Family lived a life quite ordinary on the exterior but on the interior they were profoundly filled with beatitude - living in day to day contact with the Holy of Holies - the Word of God incarnate.

However, such beatitude was not only one of pure happiness for the Holy Family. The message that the apostle St Paul sent in one of his letters especially resumes the lot of the Family of the Son of God: "I am overwhelmed with joy in my tribulations..." Just remember the birth of the Son of God: in a stable, in the middle of winter, there was no place for a mother to give birth in the inns of Bethlehem... What parents would not have felt deep anguish at such times, although St. Therese saw something grand in the lowliness!

"Then later still, O Joseph! and O Mary! I behold you

Rejected in little Bethlehem by all the dwellers there;

From door to door you vainly went, for all the people told you They had no place to shelter you, no time to give you care. Their rooms were for the great alone; and in a stable dreary The Queen of Heaven gave birth to Him who made both heaven and earth.

O Mother of my Saviour! then, thou wast not sad nor weary; In that poor shed how grand thou wert!"

Or think about how awful it must have been, on a human scale, to have been forced to escape to Egypt in exile. Only a few weeks later, the Holy Family was forced to leave Bethlehem with the newborn Child to avoid the fury of Herod. However, St. Therese does not find their exile such a hard trial:

"O Queen of all the martyr-host! Till thy life here is ended,

That sharp, sharp sword shall pierce thy heart!

At once, it pierces sore.

That thy dear Child from Herod's wrath may surely be defended,

I see thee as an exile fled to Egypt's pagan shore.

 

Beneath thy veil thy Jesus slept, thy peace no fears were daunting,

When Joseph came to bid thee wake, and straightway flee from home;

And then at once I see thee rise, as called by angels chanting,

Content, without a questioning word, in foreign lands to roam.

 

In Egypt and in poverty, I think I see thee, Mary,

All glad at heart, all radiant, with joy beyond compare.

What matters exile unto thee? Thy true home cannot vary.

Hast thou not Jesus, with thee still? and with Him Heaven is there."

In fact when Herod heard from the Wise Men (who had come to adore the Baby Jesus by following the Star) that the Savior had been born in Israel, he gave the order to search for the Child and have Him killed, because he was afraid for his own power. The flight to Egypt, after Joseph had received the order to escape in a dream, protected Jesus from the "massacre of the innocents", when Herod had all the first-born Hebrew male children killed in the region...After such difficult beginnings, the Holy parents were not spared during the childhood and youth of Christ, though He was exemplary in everyway. You only have to remember the dramatic episode of losing Jesus on the journey from the Temple of Jerusalem that St Therese saw as very difficult indeed:

"But, oh! in fair Jerusalem, a sorrow, vast, unbounded,

Indeed o'erwhelmed thy mother-heart with grief beyond compare;

For three days Jesus hid Himself; no word to thee was spoken.

Thou truly wast an exile then, and knew what exiles bear.

And when, at last, thine eyes again were thy Son's face beholding,

And love entranced thee, watching Him among the doctors wise,

"My Child!" thou saidst, "now tell me why didst leave my arms enfolding?

Didst Thou not know we sought for Thee with tear-endimmed eyes?

The Child-God answered to thee then, to thy sweet, patient wooing,

O Mother whom He loved so well, whose heart was well-nigh broken!

"How is it that you sought for Me? Wist not I must be doing My Father's work?"

Oh, who shall sound the depths those words betoken?

But next the Gospel tells me that, in His hidden mission,

Subject to Joseph and to thee was Christ, the Holy Boy;

And then my heart reveals to me how true was His submission,

And how beyond all words to tell, thy daily, perfect joy.

And now the temple's mystery I understand, dear Mother!

The answer, and the tone of voice, of Christ, my King adored.

'Twas meant the pattern thou shouldst be, thereafter to all other

Tried souls who seek, in Faith's dark night the coming of the Lord.

Since Heaven's high King has willed it so His Mother and His dearest

Should know the anguish of that night the torn heart's deepest woe,

Then are not those, who suffer thus, to Mary's heart the nearest?

And is not love in suffering God's highest gift below?

All, all that He has granted me, oh! tell Him He may take it!

Tell Him, dear Mother! He may do whate'er He please with me;

That He may bruise my heart to-day, and make it sore, and break it,

So only through Eternity my eyes His Face may see!"

The rest of Christ's life, from the moment of His entrance into public life until his Death on the Cross, we can discover in the Gospel. What mother had to suffer more than Mary standing at the foot the Cross where her Son was nailed? Such suffering can only find its meaning in the profound joy of the Resurrection of the Son, on the third day...

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