Today is the Feast of the Holy Family: the small intimate household of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  It is the feast of the family, the feast of work, and the feast of silence.  It’s the feast of true human love.  St. Joseph, the just man, is a true example of the selflessness and sacrifice that we are all called to.  What a difficult situation he was in.  Jesus is not his son.  He is engaged to be married to Mary, a young woman.  She becomes pregnant; Joseph knows he’s not the Father.  He knows what everyone assumes.  He knows under ordinary circumstances what this would mean about Mary.  But these are not ordinary circumstances.  Imagine what Joseph’s expectations must have been, becoming engaged to a beautiful and virtuous young woman, hoping to have many children, building up his carpentry shop, having a quiet, normal home together.  But that wasn’t to be.  And Joseph responds immediately and faithfully to the unexpected.  He spends the whole rest of his life respecting Mary’s vocation to be ever-virgin.  Joseph accepts the message of the angel about who this boy is, and faithfully adopts him, becoming foster-father to the Son of God.  Joseph gives up all those things he had hoped for in life in order to serve God and serve his wife.  What better example could any of us have, for what it means to truly love.  We’re conditioned by our society to take what we want.  But the Holy Family shows us that true love is never about taking.  It’s about giving, selflessly and sacrificially.  The Holy Family is the school of love.  

It is also the school of work.  Why did Jesus spend 30 years in almost complete obscurity?  He could easily have started his preaching as a younger man, in his late teens or early twenties.  Why did he wait thirty years?  The answer is very important.  Jesus Christ spent thirty years of life that is just like ours: he worked for a living, had friends, did everyday things, day in and day out.  He was a true man.  This is easy for us to forget, especially when we see those pictures of Christ that make him look so other-worldly, like an angel.  He was not an angel:  He was the 2^nd person of the Blessed Trinity: truly God.  But he was also truly man.  He had a human mind, and a human will.  And over those 30 quiet years of doing little mundane tasks, he sanctified all of the little mundane tasks that we have as well.  If we ever feel tired and fatigued and bored with life, we should remind ourselves that Christ has sanctified everything we do: our work, our family life, our chores and menial tasks, our going to sleep and our waking up.  He did all of these things, and they all have meaning now.  Because after God has come to earth, everything is changed: even the secular is now holy, the ordinary is extraordinary, the daily routine is the context of our salvation.  And our little everyday tasks can have eternal significance.  The Holy Family is the school of love and the school of work.  

The Holy Family is also the school of silence.  We actually don’t know much about those hidden 30 years; and that’s important too.  It shows the value of silence and humility.  We don’t actually know an awful lot about Mary and Joseph, the details of their life together.  But we know everything we need to know.  They were true parents, they were truly loving to each other despite living in a very unusual kind of marriage.  And they did exactly what God asked of them in their individual, unique, and often difficult vocations.  They were hidden and quiet.  Because of their faithfulness and their critical role in the salvation of the entire human race, they deserve to be set upon any human throne and crowned with any human crown.  But they were satisfied to live in the quiet, in humility, and in silence.  They remind us again and again, that true love and true joy are almost always very quiet things, found in selflessness and in sacrifice.  Joseph found his true joy in quiet selflessness and sacrifice.  Mary found her true joy in quiet selflessness and sacrifice.  Christ himself will show the fullness of what love means in his supreme selflessness and sacrifice for the entire human family.  And he invites us to follow him: he invites us to make his Mother our Mother, to make his Father our Father: to join with them in showing forth the true meaning of love and joy, to a world so desperately in need of the good news of salvation.  

Our Immaculate Mother Mary, St. Joseph Our Father and Lord, pray for us, and help us to have a love like yours, help us to make our everyday life holy like yours; help us to seek and find God in the silence of humility as you did.  Above all, Joseph and Mary, help us with you to worship your Son, who is your God and your Savior, and ours as well.  O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.  Amen.  Alleluia.