The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; December 29, 2019

Dear Friends at Saint Mary’s Immaculate Conception Parish and Saint Frances Cabrini Parish:  Praised be Jesus Christ!

In last Sunday’s Gospel, and of course a few days ago on Christmas, the location of prominence for our prayer and reflection was Bethlehem.   This Sunday, on the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, our attention shifts to Egypt, and ultimately to Nazareth. 

I have spoken often of my love for Nazareth both as it is presented to us in the Gospel narrative itself, with which we are all familiar, but also as it exists in the Holy Land today as a place of pilgrimage.  Nazareth is north of Jerusalem, on what is roughly the southern edge of the Galilean territories which feature prominently in all four Gospels as the main zone of Jesus’ ministry and activity.  Today it is a rather large city that sprawls across a few sweeping valleys and hilltops, and is home to a sizeable Muslim population, of course adherents to Judaism, and also a very small Christian population.  In many respects it is a modern city much like we would find here in America, complete with the same benefits and challenges of urban life.

In the time of Jesus, as best we can tell, it was a very small village.  When one visits today as a Christian Pilgrim, the primary stopping point is the Basilica of the Annunciation, built in the 1960’s, that stands directly over the ruins of the traditional home of the Blessed Mother, and the place where she was greeted by the Angel Gabriel.  Just up the hill from it are the ruins of the place we hear about in today’s Gospel:  the workshop of Joseph and the home of the Holy Family.  One can walk today among the excavated spaces that, by tradition, were the spaces in which Jesus spent nearly 30 years of his life, learning Joseph’s building trade, before he began his public ministry. 

Critical to the understanding of the location of Nazareth both in this Sunday’s Gospel, and also for our own prayer, is that it was NOT the place of the Savior’s birth.  Bethlehem was always prophesied to be, as the City of King David’s birth, also the place of the coming Messiah.  Yes, Jesus was born there, but as today’s Gospel makes clear, he is not allowed to stay there due to the threats against he and his family.  Joseph makes the decision to bring the Holy Family back up north, to Galilee, and to remain there where Mary’s family likely already had some roots and ties.  It was a place of safety, but that also made it a place of exile, or a place of the margins, from what would have been called the heart of the Jewish faith:  Jerusalem and Bethlehem. 

Jesus, therefore, grows up in a type of exile from the typical and expected location.  His public ministry in Galilee is a ministry exercised from the borders, or the edges, of mainstream Jewish piety, tradition, and life.  He is something of an outsider, and the Gospel message is given its first voice therefore from the edges, and from the borders.   This explains, in part, why Jesus ran into such resistance in Jerusalem almost right off the bat. 

There is something about the authentically Christian worldview, lifestyle, and message that always retains this similar quality:  it is not the typical message.  It goes against the mainstream, and to live it is to live in something of a border or an exile territory.  Therefore, it should not surprise us that as Christians we face ongoing resistance from the mainstream tides of our culture.  This same dynamic shaped the Holy Family, it shaped the Lord, and ultimately it shapes us who follow him as well. 

To visit Nazareth today is to encounter not only a beautifully silent and prayerful place, but also to return to the reality of earthly Christian exile.  It is an encounter with the new beginnings of the faith in a previously unmentioned location, Nazareth, that by necessity comes from “left field” so to speak, in the way that only God can come, as he comes into our lives.  We should visit there often either in person if one is able to, but most importantly in our prayerful engagement with the Gospel which beautifully presents to us the portrait of the Savior, and of his earthly family.

Father Nathan is planning to lead another pilgrimage to the Holy Land in late January of 2021.  Please watch ongoing parish communications for details and registration information.