T
Tantum_ergo
Guest
With respect, Rich, just what do you mean by “domestic family life”?
I gave several scriptural examples (mostly from Luke) of how the Holy Family lived as a family. . .as a new family waiting for the birth of the child, as a refugee family with an infant, as a “regular” family in a small provincial village, as a family experiencing their son’s “going missing”, finding Him and bringing Him home, the son going on after 30 obscure years into a very public ministry, the confusion of family, friends and neighbors. What more “domestic family life” do you want than seeing the perfect loving examples of a family from the marriage of the parents through the birth of the child, the raising of a child, the child becoming a man. . .finally, the DEATH of that man, the provision for the mother. . .the RESURRECTION of the man, the beginning of the church, the mother nourishing and serving the early church through her work with the apostles, ensuring that her son’s earthly legacy was heard of, written down, carried on. . .to our time and beyond. . .
Just what DO you want? What would you consider to be definitive anecdotal or Scriptural “proof” that the Holy Family is the model of holy family life, not just the one virtue of “obedience”?
I wonder. Your emphasis of the Holy Family as “just another Jewish family”, showing nothing more than any other family in Nazareth or anywhere else at the time. . .well, quite frankly it puts me in mind of the person who refers to Mary as “just another woman”, or who seems to believe that even if Mary was “mother of God” or “sinless”, that somehow she is LESS than a “normal” woman. As though because she was sinless or obedient she was just some ROBOT. As though the family life wasn’t as rich as “normal” human lives because well, SHE was sinless and the KID was God, and well, Joseph never says a word in the gospel and seems to disappear before Christ’s public ministry. . .so after all, why even think of them as a family? Your original post where you mentioned that, as a model for a CATHOLIC family, a husband and wife living without sexual relations and only ONE kid was HARDLY a “real model”. . .well, that still rings like an attempt to marginalize or minimize the Holy Family into just cardboard, robot figures with no relevance to “real domestic family life”. . . and no “evidence” that they were anything more than, at best, puppets, ciphers
If the family which included Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, is “just another family”, not specially holy, or domestic, then we are diminishing Jesus, Mary, and Joseph into “just ordinary people”. Further, if the HOLY Family is not the “model” for domestic family life, who IS? We are told that Jesus is the New Adam and Mary the New Eve, we are told that we are all children of God, we are told that God is our Father and Mary our Mother–but, if the Holy Family is NOT the model for family life, then I guess God, while He gave us “models” for everything else, man-woman, kings, “good people”. . .thought that a “family” model wasn’t “necessary” and didn’t provide one??? No, that just doesn’t jibe with Scripture or Catholic teachings. . .whereas the Bible is filled with imagery, symbolism, foreshadowings, foretellings, examples, you would somehow have the Holy Family is “just another family” with no SPECIAL family virtues. . .?
