Holy Family: Traditions, Customs, and Prayers

Today’s Gospel reading from Luke is the only Scripture we have of the Holy Family together with Jesus older than just say as an infant or very young child.  In this story of the Holy Family going up to Jerusalem Jesus is 12 years old.  They were going up to the feast of the Passover, something they did each year as was according to their custom.  I would venture to say that our own families today are not much different and actually much more alike with families of the past, even though 2,000 years removed from this story.

Think for a moment on your own families and the things that we do in regards to our customs and traditions.  Much like the Holy Family, we attend the high Holy days with our families to Church or we may make a pilgrimage to Rome or Jerusalem or some other Holy place.  We do these things together as a family as we are doing right now in Church today.

We also do many other such things together as family or even extended family, it was Christmas just the other day, think on what we were doing, we were gathered with our families, opening gifts, sitting together, sharing food together, and most especially bonding in friendship and love.

No matter what it is we do together as a family the family grows stronger because it is time spent with one another, enjoying each other’s company, telling stories, having fun, and even praying together.  John Paul II would call the family a little Church and it is, because it is there where children learn all the customs I just mentioned, but most importantly where they encounter Christ, for it is in the example, the words, the living out of holy traditions that young people find our Savior even before they may enter into any formal schooling.

God created the family unit for many reasons, but the most important was that each and every one of us would receive faith, faith in others and most of all faith in God.  Eventually one learns that even one’s own family is a pointing towards our greater family, the family of God – the Church.  And when we realize that it is God who invites us here today, and puts in our hearts that longing to be with our greatest family, with all the angels, with all the saints, with each other and all of those who have gone before us, and most especially to be with our Lord, is a familial calling.  That calling comes from the Master of the house, our Father calling His children to come to His home each and every Sunday to rest, to be happy, to have joy fill our hearts, to share in the Holy meal of the Eucharist, for there is nothing better, there is nothing more fulfilling, there is no greater thing than to be present right here – right now in our Holy Family with the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.