The Holy Kindred
Feast of the Holy Family. Fr Richard Conrad uncovers the profound theological meaning of today’s feast.
When we venerate Jesus’s Family, we shouldn’t confine ourselves to Mary and Joseph; he had an extended Family. Through Elizabeth, Mary’s kinswoman, John the Baptist was a relative. We hear of ‘brothers and sisters,’ who may have been children of Joseph by a previous marriage; more likely, they were cousins, since the Aramaic word we translate as ‘brother’ could equally well mean cousin. In Mark chapter 6 we learn that the women remained in Nazareth; from the end of John chapter 2 we surmise that the men relocated to Capernaum with Jesus and Mary. Scripture contains a Letter by one of them, James, which shows how deeply he assimilated Jesus’s teaching. This James led the Christians in Jerusalem after Herod killed John’s brother James, and Peter and John moved on.
John tells us Mary’s sister stood by Jesus’s Cross. If she is the mother of the sons of Zebedee whom Matthew mentions, then James and John were also Jesus’s cousins. This would explain why they got their mother to ask Jesus to give them the best jobs! People in authority can be tempted to favour their relatives unjustly; however, we must have a special love for our families. Aquinas says this love will remain when we are together in Heaven. Grace typically perfects nature, and does not bypass it; hence the love of God affirms our natural loves, while it purifies them and expands our hearts to share God’s care for all human beings. When we rest in God, we will share God’s delight in those who have helped us, and whom we have helped, on the journey – including those with whom we’ve shared the journey intimately.
During the Middle Ages, devotion to Jesus’s extended Family was strong. For a couple of centuries ‘the Holy Kindred’ was a favourite subject of artists, until this became unfashionable because they drew many details from unreliable legends. However, the devotion itself made a valid and important point. Jesus is true God and true man. He, the Father’s coeternal and coequal Son, took our nature to himself from Mary’s flesh. The whole human race is a close-knit family – that’s scientifically certain – hence, through the Holy Kindred, each human being is, literally, a relative of God! If each and every human being is that precious to God, he or she must be precious to us. By creating each human soul in his image, God gives each human being a unique dignity; by making each human being his kith and kin, God the Son enhances that dignity, and declares his intent to draw everyone to himself.
In Nazareth, Jesus, Mary and Joseph enjoyed the support of their extended family. But they had gone alone into exile in Egypt, in solidarity with all families who are displaced and deprived of humane support. When Jesus was lost for some days, as today’s Gospel recounts, Mary and Joseph suffered in solidarity with all parents anxious for their children’s well-being. When eventually Joseph died, Mary and Jesus grieved in solidarity with all those who suffer bereavement.
Mary and Joseph had a unique, irreplaceable ministry. For Jesus, true man, has a complete human psyche. In the heights, so to speak, of his human mind, he knew his Father – hence he knew the Temple was his Father’s House. We cannot imagine that aspect of Jesus’s experience – we will appreciate it when our hope is fulfilled, when, with, in and through Jesus, we shall see his Father as he is. We do know this vision of God cannot be a matter of concepts, for God is beyond all concepts. Therefore Jesus needed to develop the kind of concepts we develop as we increase in wisdom and stature, so that he could live as a child then a carpenter, then pursue his public ministry. It was from Mary and Joseph he learned his People’s language and traditions. With them, in the synagogue, he pondered the Scriptures. From Mary he learned what Gabriel, Elizabeth and Simeon had said about him. After Joseph’s death, he pondered with Mary the things she treasured in her heart – doing so in prayerful communion with his Father, seeing in the divine Mind the mission he must accomplish. In obedience to Mary Jesus worked his first sign, and so set out towards the Hour when he would draw all things to himself.
Readings: 1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28 | 1 John 3:1-2,21-24 | Luke 2:41-52
Image: detail from Bernardino Luini, Holy Family with Saints; Ambrosiana, Milan, photographed by Richard Mortel (CC BY 2.0)
