Vatican City, 17 December 2014 (VIS) –
The family is the “great gift that the Lord has given to the world
ever since the beginning, when he entrusted to Adam and Eve the
mission of multiplying and filling the earth; the gift that Jesus
confirmed and sealed in His Gospel”, said the Holy Father during
this Wednesday's general audience, in the first of the new cycle of
catechesis dedicated to the family, which will continue throughout
the coming year.
The proximity to Christmas illuminates
the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God, which opens a new
chapter in the universal history of man and woman. “And this new
beginning occurs within a family, in Nazareth. He could have come
spectacularly, or as a warrior, an emperor… No – he came as the
son of a family, in a family”, he emphasised.
God chose to be born “in a human
family, that He Himself had formed. He created this family in a
remote village in the outer reaches of the Roman Empire. Not in Rome,
the capital of the Empire, not in a great city, but in an almost
invisible and somewhat notorious periphery. This is even noted in the
Gospel, almost as if it were a turn of phrase: 'Can anything good
come out of Nazareth?'. Perhaps, in many parts of the world, we too
still speak in this way when we hear the name of certain peripheral
areas of large cities. And yet, it was precisely there, in the
outskirts of the great Empire, that there began the most holy and
good story of Jesus among mankind”.
“Jesus chose to remain in the
periphery for thirty years, during which there is no mention of
miracles or healing, of preaching, of crowds who run after him. In
Nazareth, everything seems to happen 'normally', according to the
habits of a pious and hard-working family of Israelites. … The
Gospels, in their sobriety, say nothing of Jesus' adolescence and
leave this task to our affectionate imaginings. Art, literature and
music have followed the path of the imagination. Certainly, it is not
difficult to imagine how much mothers could learn from Mary's tender
care for her Son! And how much fathers could benefit from the example
of Joseph, a righteous man, who dedicated his life to supporting and
defending his wife and child – is family – through difficult
times. To say nothing of how much the young could be encouraged by
the adolescent Jesus in understanding the necessity and beauty of
cultivating their deepest vocation, and of having great dreams”, he
added.
“Every Christian family – as Mary
and Joseph did – must first welcome Jesus, listen to Him, speak
with Him, shelter Him, protect Him, grow with Him; and in this way,
make the world better. Let us make space in our heart and in our days
for the Lord. This is what Mary and Joseph did, and it was not easy:
how many difficulties they had to overcome! It was not a false or
unreal family. The family of Nazareth calls to us to rediscover the
vocation and the mission of the family, of every family. And so what
happened in those thirty years in Nazareth can also happen to us:
making love, not hate, normal; mutual help common, instead of
indifference and hostility. It is not by chance that Nazareth means
'she who preserves', like Mary who, as the Gospel tells us,
'treasured all these things in her heart'. From then on, whenever
there is a family that preserves this mystery, even if it should be
at the outer reaches of the world, the mystery of the Son of God is
at work. And He comes to save the world”.