Reflection for Feast of the Holy Family, week beginning 26 December 2021
This, the final Sunday of 2021, we are celebrating the great feast of the HOLY FAMILY OF NAZARETH. The theme of FAMILY is so very profound in our Catholic Faith.
The Most Holy Trinity is a FAMILY OF PERSONS – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. They indwell each other, and yet are distinct PERSONS. (This is the greatest and deepest of all mysteries. The Holy Trinity is a heavenly phenomenon. No created being can explain it or would dare claim to be capable of explaining it.) What we can say would be as follows:
Only God the Father is UNBEGOTTEN (not begotten by any other being). He has one only-begotten Son, His perfect mirror-image or reflection. Their great mutual love which proceeds from Both is the Holy Spirit.
God the Son, in God the Father’s good time, would enter the human realm, and would become the centre of THE HOLY FAMILY OF NAZARETH with Mary and Joseph. He would be the Saviour Baby of Bethlehem, a town name whose meaning is House of Bread. He would be the Living Bread having come down from Heaven, the Bread of Life.
Mary, His Mother, is the Queen of all the saints. She is far higher than all of them put together. She is the Immaculate Conception – the only human being to never have been marked on the soul with the mark of Original Sin, passed down from Adam and Eve. She is the highest honour of the human race.
From this, it follows that it is Joseph who is the greatest saint of all. He is the patron of the Universal Church, Terror of demons and the patron saint of a happy death. He was foster-father of Jesus and guardian of Mary.
Let us thank the Holy Family for their protection in 2021. Let us commit our families and ourselves to them for 2022.
Good Shepherd Catholic Church 