Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

1. On this first Sunday after Christmas, the Church is celebrating the Feast of the Holy Family. 

As at the crib, in a glance of faith we embrace together the divine Child and the persons beside him: his most holy Mother and Joseph, his putative father. What light shines from this Christmas “group icon”! A light of mercy and salvation for the whole world, a light of truth for every person, for the human family and for individual families. How lovely it is for spouses to be reflected in the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph! How comforting for parents, especially if they have a small baby! How enlightening for engaged couples, struggling with their plans for life! 

To gather round the Bethlehem grotto contemplating there the Holy Family, enables us to appreciate the gift of family intimacy in a special way, and spurs us to offer human warmth and concrete solidarity in those unfortunately numerous situations which, for various reasons, lack peace, harmony, in a word, lack “family”. 

2. The message that comes from the Holy Family is first of all a message of faith: the family of Nazareth is a home which truly centres on God. For Mary and Joseph, this choice of faith becomes concrete in their service to the Son of God entrusted to their care, but it is also expressed in their mutual love, rich in spiritual tenderness and fidelity. 

With their life, they teach that marriage is a covenant between man and woman, a covenant that involves reciprocal fidelity and rests upon their common trust in God. Such a noble, profound and definitive covenant, as to constitute for believers the sacrament of love of Christ and of the Church. The spouses’ fidelity stands like a solid rock on which the children’s trust rests. 

When parents and children together breathe this atmosphere of faith they have a ready energy that enables them to face even difficult trials, as the Holy Family’s experience shows. 

3. It is necessary to nourish this atmosphere of faith. In this perspective preparations are being made for the Second World Meeting with Families which is to take place in Rio de Janeiro on 4-5 October 1997. It will be a great celebration of the families of Latin America and of the entire world, which will renew the message launched at the first meeting that took place in Rome on the occasion of the International Year of the Family. 

I commend to Mary “Queen of the family” all the world’s families, especially those that are encountering serious difficulties, and I invoke her motherly protection upon them.

[Pope John Paul II, Angelus 29 December 1996].

Domestic Church

3. Another theme is that of the family as the place where vocation matures. We can grasp this aspect in the answer given by Jesus to Mary and Joseph, who were anxiously looking for him while he was conversing with the doctors in the temple in Jerusalem: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?" (Lk 2:49). In the Letter I addressed to young people all over the world in 1985, on the occasion of Youth Day, I tried to highlight how precious is this life project that precisely during the youthful age each young person must strive to elaborate. Just as the twelve-year-old Jesus was totally dedicated to the things of the Father, so each one is called to ask himself the question: what are these "things of the Father", in which I must commit myself for the rest of my life?

4. Other aspects inherent in the vocation of the family are illustrated to us by the apostolic parenesis, as for example found in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. For the Apostles, as well as later for the Church Fathers, the family is the 'domestic church'. Pope Paul VI remains faithful to this great tradition in his wonderful homily on Nazareth and the example that comes to us from the Holy Family: "Nazareth reminds us what the family is, what the communion of love is, its austere and simple beauty, its sacred and inviolable character..." (Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, II, 1964, p. 25).

5. Thus, from the beginning, the Church has been writing her Letter to Families, and I myself intend to move in this vein, preparing a Letter for the Year of the Family: it will be made public before long. The Holy Family of Nazareth is an ongoing challenge for us, forcing us to deepen our understanding of the mystery of the 'domestic church' and of every human family. It is an incentive for us to pray for families and with families, and to share all that constitutes joy and hope for them, but also concern and anxiety.

6. Family experience, in fact, is called to become, in Christian life, the content of a daily offertory, like a holy offering, a sacrifice pleasing to God (cf. 1 Pet 2:5; Rom 12:1). The Gospel of Jesus' presentation in the temple also suggests this to us. Jesus, who is "the light of the world" (Jn 8:12), but also "the sign of contradiction" (Lk 2:34), wishes to welcome this offertory of each family as he welcomes the bread and wine in the Eucharist. These human joys and hopes, but also the inevitable sufferings and worries, proper to every family life, he wants to unite with the bread and wine destined for transubstantiation, thus assuming them in a certain way in the mystery of his Body and Blood. This Body and Blood he then gives in communion as a source of spiritual energy, not only for each individual person but also for each family.

7. May the Holy Family of Nazareth introduce us to an ever deeper understanding of the vocation of every family, which finds in Christ the source of its dignity and holiness. At Christmas, God met man and united him indissolubly to himself: this "admirable consortium" also includes the "family consortium". Contemplating this reality, the Church bends her knees as if before a "great mystery" (cf. Eph 5:32): she sees in the experience of communion to which the family is called a reflection in time of the Trinitarian communion, and she knows well that Christian marriage is not only a natural reality, but also the sacrament of the spousal unity of Christ with his Church. It is this sublime dignity of the family and marriage that the Second Vatican Council invited us to promote. Blessed are the families, who will be able to grasp and realise this original and wonderful plan of God, walking in the ways indicated by Christ.

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 29 December 1993]