Bible connection
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. – Luke 2:15-16
All about the Holy Family
Today’s reading provides the picture of the iconic family: Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Almost everyone, Christian or not, has seen a painting or a card depicting this group. In Roman Catholic culture, today is the Feast of the Holy Family, designed to focus everyone on the spirituality of the home.
In Eurocentric Christianity, this veneration for the Holy Family as a group, did not arise until the 1600’s and was not officially recognized until the feast day was formally instituted in 1921. That was also about the time the phrase “nuclear family” was coined to define the basic, normal family grouping in a capitalist society. The feast was originally celebrated on the Sunday after Epiphany but was moved to the Sunday after Christmas in 1969, to bring it within the Christmas season, the most family-oriented season of the year.
Both the Catholics and Protestants have been obsessed with the health of the family as capitalism has done all it could to fracture it in the name of enriching it. The Church’s focus has often left unmarried people, people from broken or foster homes, and people who don’t fit into hetero-normative relationships feeling like second-class members of the Church — all the while Jesus never married and Paul suggested it might be better if one did not.
Nevertheless, it makes sense to have a very “fertile” day in the midst of the Christmas celebration. It is, after all, a celebration of miraculous conception and the birth of the Son of God! The incarnation overturns the propensity of spiritual people to long to be without a body by affirming the goodness of the body as a fitting place for God to dwell and affirming the miraculous experience of sexual ecstasy, conception and birth. The incarnation is all about reclaiming and restoring the good, reproducing creation.
More
An interview with Janet McKenzie, the artist of the painting above. [link]
It is not without merit that On the 5th day of Christmas my true love sent to me… Five Gold Rings.
For two centuries after the Reformation, the Catholic structure of the Church was repressed in England, especially. The legend has grown up that catechists used this song for children to defiantly teach their polity.
Purportedly, the gift on the fifth day “secretly” represents the Torah, the central five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The gift of these books reminds the singer of humanity’s fall from grace and of God’s response by creating a people to be a light to the world into which THE Light of the World would be born.
What do we do with this?
Pray: Open the eyes of my heart so I can see what you have done and sing for joy over the new creation.
Christians often look askance at people who can’t love their families. So let’s assume you have already considered how that area of your life is going — how you relate to mom and dad, how you are a mom or dad, and whether you live as a beloved child of God. If not, pause here.
Let’s spend some time singing with the morning stars. Recall one of the Christmas songs that have now stopped playing wherever religious songs are still played. Let it play over and over in your mind or in your ears, until you stop resisting it and go with its joy. “Joy to the World” is a good choice. Let it impregnate you with some goodness. Here are suggestions for new carols to move with which might not be in your repertoire: The Huron Carol. Tu scendi dalle stella. Daystar Carol.