God as a Real Father - The Holy Family (2025-01-12)

“Do you not know that I must be about my Father’s business”

This day we celebrate the Holy Family. A beautiful feast, a beautiful mystery, that Our Lord Jesus Christ would enter into the world in the context of a  family. The quiet of Bethlehem is left and then there is a sojourn into Egypt, now the scene is in the bustling city of Jerusalem. It seems the scene all too common with families in a crowded place, that the child will become loss. But for the Holy Child, He meant for this to happen. He will speak and this is the first time that His words are recorded. What is it He says? “I must be about my Fathers business. “

These words are the mission statement of Our Lord and it will direct everything in His earthly mission and thereafter. Our Lord will give testimony of His love and devotion to His father in Heaven. “It is my meat to do the will of my Father.” “My words are not mine own but my Fathers.” “I honor my father (said to the pharisees).. .”

In this particular mystery Our Lord is giving a perfect example of the positive precepts of the first 4 commandments. He is at the temple, the house of His father, giving honor to Him in action, word and testimony and honoring His earthly parents Our Lady and St. Joseph.

We are bound to venerate our earthly parents. “Honor thy father, forget not the groaning of thy mother: remember that thou hadst not been born but through them…” (eccl. 7:29-30). “Honor them…that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest be long lived upon earth” (Eph. 6:2-3). We are to practice piety towards one’s parents from who we originate.

If we need to venerate our forefathers who gave us our bodies thereof but there is also another life, higher and divine than that of nature, that is to say, the supernatural life. As heaven is above earth, so the life of the soul is above that of the body. Our soul is granted the life of grace which is given us by God through human channels.

This paternity which has begotten us to this higher life has a right also to our love and gratitude. Our homage must be consistent with the blessings received. If the worship due to our ancestors in the flesh is great, no less is that owed to our spiritual leaders, our founder archbishop Marcel Lefebvre says concerning superiors, priors and priests. If we love dearly those who formed and instructed us in basic things, how much more need we love those who taught and brought the supernatural life to us? Meaning what a great debt we owe to parents but we owe more to God and Our Lord Jesus Christ Priest and his ministers who reflect this spiritual side of paternity of God. In particular, the priests who baptized, instructed us, heard our confessions, distributed Holy Communion etc.

Paternity is from God. “from whom all paternity in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:15), God who is the source of all authority and power, as Christ testified before Pilate: “Thou wouldst have no power against me unless it were given thee from above” (Jn. 19:11). God has fathered the whole of creation, drawing everything out of nothing by His simple word ‘Let there be’.  Beyond all others, He can be called the father of all things; He enjoys supreme dominion over things. He enjoys authority over all as its Creator, and also as He fulfills truly the meaning of authority which comes from the Latin augere—giving increase. This paternity is passed on to the nature of man, to beget children – an increase in bodies and souls and so that their souls increase in grace and blessings destined for heaven.

In Greek and Roman antiquity, the powers of the father were almost limitless. The father stood as a priest inside of the home leading the cult of worship to the pagan deities of the household. It was generally seen that the Father in these pagan households had the obligation to generate children of the household to worship the deities and to take over when he passed on to continue the rites of worship.

Human fatherhood is subject to the higher domain of the heavenly Father, the author of all fatherhood. There must be an alignment in wills between the Fathers here on earth and the ultimate heavenly father. We see this clearly illustrated in the Gospel today. We have St. Joseph, foster father, or earthly father of Our Lord seeking Him in the temple. The Son, the second Person in His Fathers temple or house doing His Will. St. Joseph understands this as Divine Providence and is silent. Its almost as if St. Joseph, the perfect image of the earthly father, fades away to reveal the Heavenly Father.

Let us go to the Holy Family in which we find the exemplar of the family. For Father, Mother and Child. Let us ask for an increase in Holy families after the image of the perfect family. Let us ask for guidance and protection and increase in fecundity of our own dear families.

fr. Perter Fortin