Feast of the HOLY FAMILY...

   +JMJ+

Feast* of the HOLY FAMILY of 
Jesus, Mary and Joseph

*The Sunday between Christmas and New Year's Day.

If both are Sundays, the feast is celebrated on December 30.

May the example of the Holy Family,
with the aid of the Holy Spirit,
guide all families, especially those most troubled,
to be homes of communion and prayer
and to always seek your truth and live in your love.
Through Christ our Lord.  Amen
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for us!
World Meeting of Families - Philadelphia 2015

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph 

had only one life, one purpose: 

To glorify the Heavenly Father. 

That is what we also must want. 

To achieve it, we have to enter 

into union with Mary and Joseph,

share their life - family life, 

the intimate interior life

of which God alone is secret.

What happiness to be called to this life.  

Our love will consist 

in living with Mary and Joseph

on the love of Jesus Eucharistic.”

St. Peter Julian Eymard

 "The family has the mission to 

guard, reveal and communicate love,

and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in 

God’s love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord 

for the Church, His bride. 

Every particular task of the family 

is an expression and concrete actuation 

of that fundamental mission.” -

St John Paul II

________________________

Home life is the God-appointed training 

ground of human character...  

Archbishop Fulton J Sheen

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From the Catechism of the Catholic Church

533 The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life:

The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus - the school of the Gospel. First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us. . . A lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character... A lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the "Carpenter's Son", in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work. . . To conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern their brother who is God. (Pope Paul VI at Nazareth, January 5, 1964)

534 The finding of Jesus in the temple is the only event that breaks the silence of the Gospels about the hidden years of Jesus (Lk 2: 41-52). Here Jesus lets us catch a glimpse of the mystery of his total consecration to a mission that flows from His divine Sonship: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's work?" (Lk 2:49) Mary and Joseph did not understand these words, but they accepted them in faith. Mary "kept all these things in her heart" during the years Jesus remained hidden in the silence of an ordinary life.

_______________________

Holy Family of Nazareth, help us to willingly 

enter the hidden life of Nazareth, the school of Nazareth, 

that allows us to enter into  fellowship with Jesus 

by the most ordinary events of daily life. 
Holy Family of Nazareth, pray for us. Amen.

__________________

CONSIDER THIS:   

Perhaps a 2024 resolution might include resuming or beginning

the practice of writing/typing JMJ (Jesus, Mary, Joseph) atop

or at the close of your papers (emails) of correspondence.  

It symbolically illustrates a worldview,

a mindset that reminds that we follow an example, 

a way that is sanctified and greater than ourselves.

CONSIDER THIS TOO:

Ask the Lord to guide you to an icon, painting, print,

stained glass or statue of the Holy Family...

Or simply frame a Holy Card or Christmas card 

of the Holy Family.

Give it a place of honor in your home!

Holy Family of Nazareth, 

pray for us! 

_______________________

Seventh Day of Christmas

The Food of Angels, here....

"He is the Bread sown in the virgin, leavened in the Flesh,

molded in His Passion, baked in the furnace of the Sepulchre,
placed in the Churches, and set upon the Altars, 
which daily supplies Heavenly Food to the faithful." 

 St Peter Chrysologus

O beata infantia
Chant for the Christmas season
_____

O blessed Infancy, 

by which the life of our race

has been restored!

O very dear and delightful cries,

by which we have escaped 

eternal lamentation!
O blessed swaddling clothes,

with which the defilement of our sins

has been wiped away!

O splendid manger, 

in which lay not just the hay of animals,

but in which was found 

the Food of Angels!

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Sixth day of Christmas