Feast of the Holy Family

Of all the feasts I have come to love, the Feast of the Holy family is one which has grown to have most meaning for me. That is, naturally, due to my close connection with Sister Marietta and the ways in which she has shown me the heart, mission, and charism of the Sisters of the Holy Family. A few years ago, when I had given Marietta a copy of my newly revised eremitical Rule, she gave me a copy of the Constitutions of the Sisters of the Holy Family (Fremont, CA). In that set of constitutions is an image of the painting by Jean Francois Millet of Gleaners at work. These peasant women toil in the fields to garner all the bits of precious harvest that might otherwise be left behind to die or be raked together to be burned as waste/chaff. In the OT (see Ruth) the poor followed behind harvesters and were able to glean bits of wheat that had been dropped or otherwise abandoned as fruitless or without relative value.

So many were fed in this way and in many Christian kingdoms throughout the centuries "gleaning" came to be a legal right of the poor who followed behind the reapers. Millet's picture was made in 1857 and featured the lowest classes of French rural society in a sympathetic way. Apparently it was not well-received by the French upper classes. It is the charism of the Sisters of the Holy Family (1872-present)  to be present in our society to the weakest among us, especially families and children, in a way which allows the least and lost to be valued and nurtured in the way God does. 

Families are meant to be sanctuaries where the weakest and neediest among us, our children, are loved, fed, taught, nurtured, and protected from harm. It is the family which is the natural context in which human beings grow to maturity and begin to realize the potential that is given them by God. Every family is meant to be a network and context of loving and challenging relationships where an infant can become the kind of loving, trusting, and trustable human being who will one day go their own way in strength and integrity to change society and the world for the better with their presence. The potential for things to go awry in such a situation is huge of course, but it is on today's Feast that we celebrate one of those graced occasions when family was all it was meant to be. 

This tiny community of love gave us a savior, someone like us in all things yet without sinning! Yes, of course Jesus was the Son and gift of God entrusted immediately to Mary, Joseph, and their relations, but it was the family, this holy family that allowed Jesus to grow in his relationship with God, with God's People, and humankind as a whole --- and ultimately, to realize the potential of his identity and calling. When Luke recounts Jesus returning from Jerusalem with his family and says he "grew in wisdom and stature," this is what Luke (2:4) is speaking of. It was this Holy Family that was iconic of what every family is meant to be --- and too, what the Sisters of the Holy Family give their lives to help assure happens for every family and child to whom they minister.

Bro Mickey McGrath, osfs

My thanks to God this feast day for the Holy Family and to the Sisters of the Holy Family, their Associates all of whom renew vows and covenant bonds on this feast, and any and all who share in such an awesome ministry and mission! God comes to us in littleness and weakness; it is the Holy Family and those who act in their name who show us what it means to truly offer this God our hospitality, our love, and our commitment to (his) own enterprise of love. At a time in our own culture when children and families are being harmed at an alarmingly increased rate, I pray the image of the Holy Family, and the mission of the Sisters of the Holy Family to carefully glean so that nothing and no one might be lost or treated as inconsequential stubble and fruitless chaff, will be a prophetic image and mission we each and all make our own.