Why did Jesus choose to become a baby born of a mother and father and to spend all but His last years living in an ordinary human family? In part, to reveal God’s plan to make all people live as one “holy family” in His Church.

In the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, God reveals our true home. We’re to live as His children, “chosen ones, holy and beloved,” as the First Reading puts it.

The family advice we hear in today’s readings—for mothers, fathers, and children—is all solid and practical. Happy homes are the fruit of our faithfulness to the Lord, we sing in today’s Psalm. But the Liturgy is inviting us to see more, to see how, through our family obligations and relationships, our families become heralds of the family of God that He wants to create on earth.

Jesus shows us this in today’s Gospel. His obedience to His earthly parents flows directly from His obedience to the will of His heavenly Father. Joseph and Mary aren’t identified by name, but three times are called “his parents” and are referred to separately as his “mother” and “father.” The emphasis is all on their familial ties to Jesus. But these ties are emphasized only so that Jesus, in the first words He speaks in Luke’s Gospel, can point us beyond that earthly relationship to the Fatherhood of God.

In what Jesus calls “my Father’s house,” every family finds its true meaning and purpose. The Temple we read about in the Gospel today is God’s house, His dwelling. But it’s also an image of the family of God, the Church.

When God sent his only begotten Son into the world, Jesus was born into a human family as a Jew who was raised according to the teaching and wisdom of God’s word in the Hebrew Scriptures and the religious customs of his people. Jesus was born under the law of Moses and was circumcised on the eighth day and given his name, Yeshua in Hebrew (Jesus in English) which means “God saves.”

We know little about Jesus’ early life at home in Nazareth. Luke tells us that Jesus was obedient to his parents—Mary, his mother and Joseph, his foster father. As devout and God-fearing Jews, Joseph and Mary raised the boy Jesus according to the Scriptures and Jewish customs. It was the duty of all Jewish parents to raise their children in the instruction and wisdom of God’s word in the Scriptures. We shall also raise our children in the instruction and wisdom of God’s word in the Scripture and in the fear of God always. And pray for our children every day of our life. May God bless us and our families abundantly.

Love and prayers,

Fr. Charley