Heaven kissed Earth in the house of the Holy Family.

The humble home of Nazareth was a sanctuary of divine love and an oasis of prayer and peace, imbued with the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Surely Jesus spoke to His Heavenly Father in the company of His virgin mother and most chaste father, who sought the Father’s Will with their whole hearts. The Holy Family would have prayed as one, “Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name.”

The Christ Child was both student and teacher, learning how to pray through His parents’ instruction, and instructing His parents through His very life and being. Through them, He received the Jewish faith and law, learning the traditions of God’s chosen people, all the while forming them in the religion of which He was the fulfillment. Our Lady and St. Joseph were His first disciples – the first Jews who believed in God’s Anointed, making them the first Christians.

I find it so beautiful to reflect on the life of the Holy Family, whose love for one another reflected the love of the Blessed Trinity. We need devotion to the Holy Family in these times, when the very institution of the family is under attack, and many have lost the precious legacy of tradition. How many young people find themselves in a crisis of meaning, ignorant of their identity as a son or daughter of God because the Faith was never handed down to them? How many question their dignity and worth because they were not loved unconditionally by their mothers? How many struggle to know the protection and mercy of their Heavenly Father, because their human father was abusive or absent?

Being fully God, the boy Jesus was omniscient, yet He subjected Himself to the ordinary laws of human maturation and development, through which He “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom” (Luke 2:40). In doing so, He sanctified family life, modeling for us the importance of receiving a Christian education in the home, the provision of which is the special task of Christian parents.

It has been said: “A family that prays together, stays together.” May the Holy Spirit overshadow the life of our families, making the hearth the first school of charity and worship.