Certainly, the fact that Christ grew up in a family setting was more than simply an historical accident. Christ could have chosen any number of ways of moving into the human scene. But he chose to be shaped as any human being is shaped. He chose to be, as St Paul puts it, literally “like us” in every detail. It is simply true to say that in a very real sense Christ became the person he was because Joseph and Mary were the people they were. And that is a process he chose to undergo. That means that there is something about that process that is genuinely sacred, necessarily human, and that to have avoided it would have meant that Christ would have been something other than fully human.

The family atmosphere, the family influence, is the deepest and most formative element in a person’s life. That is most true, of course, of one’s original family, the family in which one grew up. Almost everything that a child does is in one way or another an imitation of his or her parents or older brothers and sisters. Almost every habit, every attitude that is acquired, is in someway a reflection, either positively or negatively, of the effect that other family members have had.

It is an intimate companionship with other people, and only that way, that one becomes human, or at least what God means by human. And that is true at any age, in any setting: childhood, youth, adulthood, old age, a nuclear family, an extended family, a small group who shares similar interests, or a large community with many interests. It is by such intimate interaction that a person learns to be sensitive to the presence, the needs, the rights of other human beings. It is only in such interaction that a person comes to see oneself as an individual

with one’s own rights and one’s own responsibilities. Simply enough, it is in such interaction that a person learns to love.

So, to promote, to encourage in one another the ability to love creatively and responsibly, is the first and most basic task of any gathering of human beings anywhere. That is what family means. All the rest, the house, the clothes, the food, the work, the play, all of those are just not good enough if that first is not successful.

Let us treasure very carefully our family life. It is a valuable thing. It is meant, by God’s design, to provide us with powers we desperately need. But like so many valuable things, it is fragile. It can be weakened, even destroyed, by thoughtlessness, insensitivity. To avoid that requires patient, loving effort. But it is worth it. It works. It saves.

Christ spent thirty years of his life doing just that. And that, every bit as much as his next three years, brought salvation. The Holy Family was no accident. Neither must be ours.

Fr Andrew