The Holy Family and the Fire That Forges the Soul
What if the pressures that threaten to break us are shaping who we become?
The Idol That Cannot Withstand Pressure
When many of us think of the Holy Family, we think of a figurine set out for the Christmas season. A beautiful porcelain sculpture of a radiant and calm mother cradling her child in her arms, and Joseph standing strong and firm beside her, often with his arm around her, cradling both her and the child.
This image carries a lot of weight within it. It speaks to a structure that is being placed upon us in the way we are to perceive this family: holy, sculpted in perfection. They are not real. They are otherworldly beings whose perfection can only be knelt to or idolized.
The problem with an idol is that when pressure is applied to it, it breaks.
Cracks in the Porcelain
As you are either gazing upon or imagining that perfect family, cracks appear within it, and light shines forth. The world is opened, and a new reality unfurls before you. You see a young girl with her first child, an untested, fresh husband, and a first-time father.
They live in a client state of Rome, colonized by an empire that only cares what it can extract from them, and nothing for them as individuals or for the lives that they live. They live under the reign of King Herod, who cares only for his own grandeur and nothing about the little people that make up his kingdom.
Just to get to this moment, they had to overcome so much. The weight of all of those pressures bears down on them, and heat ripples the air like heat from a pavement in the summer sun. In this moment, they could be consumed by the fire around them, or transformed into something stronger, something new.
The Crucible of the Holy Family
Mary: Original Grace and the Courage to Say Yes
Mary is the embodiment of original grace. That Yetzer ha-Tov, that inclination toward good, that welcomes and invites all into her loving arms. This grace is for strength. Though it is not naïveté, it is the understanding that together we are stronger. Together we can accomplish more than we ever could alone.
She embraces all things and ponders them in her heart. Her voice whispers softly, but when it needs to be strong, she proclaims the downfall of kings. Grace and blessing flow through her, and they are her strength. In that grace, in that blessing, she has found freedom and liberation, and that has given her the strength to say yes to the cosmos, yes to life, yes to the mysteries she is called to walk through.
Joseph: Skepticism, Fear, and the Weight of Responsibility
Joseph stands at her side. The Yetzer ha-Rah, the inclination to evil. Now, this is not evil as moral failing, but that inclination toward separation and toward thinking of self.
When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, fear arose within him, and he thought about setting her aside quietly. But he did not lose his compassion. He did not want to disgrace her in the eyes of the community, and he did not want harm to come upon her.
The controlling legalism and shame of the community he lived in drove him toward casting her out, but in his heart, he was open to change. That openness came through the voice of an angel who told him about the miracle they would bring into the world.
Even in his skepticism and fear, Joseph was open and listening. He carried the weight of the law, of the empire, of the threats that were upon him and his community constantly, and yet he had the spaciousness within him to wonder if things could be different.
It is that skepticism, that inclination toward individuality, that allows him to see through the legal constraints placed upon him, to see through the shame that tried to control him and move him to cast out his beloved. Without this, there would be no Christmas story. Mary would have been cast out, and she likely would have been stoned for having a child out of wedlock.
His skepticism both threatened the Holy Family and, in the end, preserved it.
Christ the Middle Way: The Bond That Holds
Joseph does not abandon Mary, not because an angel told him not to, but because he had faith. Faith is not something that you believe. It is something that you hold on to, a hope that drives you toward a better future. Faith gave him the courage to act.
Jesus, this holy Christ child, is the glue at the center that holds Mary and Joseph together. Through Mary’s grace and acceptance of the angel’s message, the Christ child flowed into her body. It is through Joseph’s skepticism, paired with the courage to become the father of that child, that allowed him to be born.
Jesus, here in the heart of the Holy Family, is the Cosmic Christ, the one who holds all things together. He is the light that shines into the darkness that the darkness could not overcome.
Jesus is the middle way, the new way between the grace of his mother and the skepticism of his father. He is the way that carries us forward and through. He is the Logos, the Word, the discourse, the conversation that Joseph’s skepticism does not close out and that Mary’s grace invites.
He is the way, the truth, and the life. The way to move forward, the truth of what was happening in the moment, and the life they could share together in a world that had so much threat and danger allied against them.
The Fire of Control
The Holy Family was formed in this crucible. The fire that lit around them was the system of control they lived within. This was the control of the law that told them how a family should be put together, which they had the courage to walk in the light and leave to the side.
It was the moralism that should have controlled Joseph’s heart and prevented him from being open to caring for Mary and Jesus. It was the colonization around them that wanted them to see that they were nothing but a cog in a machine meant only to serve its interests and bring glory to it.
The fire was the desire of Herod to be the preeminent one, the only one to receive glory and honor. These flames burned around them and added pressure to the crucible.
The fire did not consume them. Instead, it forged them into something new, something beyond its control.
The Same Fire Still Burns
These fires still burn in the world today. Wherever there is fear, there will be those who seek to control it and to control others through it. Where there is greed, there will be those who seek to hoard wealth and deprive others of its bounty.
As long as we allow life to be seen as a ladder that can be climbed rather than a circle that emboldens and protects us all, there will be those seeking to climb over others and kick others off the ladder so they can feel certainty in their position higher on the ranks.
Through embracing our own internal grace, we open ourselves to compassion, so that we see we are all together in this, that the fear in us is shared by others, and that we do nothing by combating fear. Fear must be driven out. Fear cannot abide where love is strong.
In our skepticism, we learn not to take everything at face value. When someone tells us that a thing is so, we look into it, we seek, we test its fruit, and we see what it bears in our lives.
Something that harms any one of us harms all of us. Something that controls any one of us controls all of us.
In grace, we learn to identify with our fellow wayfarers in this world, those who walk with us on two, four, and many more legs, those that fly through the air or swim in the sea, the stones, the rivers, the mountains, and the stars themselves.
Our skepticism and grace remind us that anything that tries to control any of these tries to control us. A system of control binds the controller as much as its victims.
Whenever we find ourselves thinking, “This is the only way,” or “We must do this for the greater good,” we have bound ourselves to a system of control. There is always another way.
The most insidious thing about control is how it worms its way inside of us, making us think its thoughts.
Forged into Light
In the heat of this crucible, we, like the Holy Family, can burn away the impurities that rise and shed off as slag and forge a new material that shines forth with a radiance that casts out the darkness.
We embody blessing and compassion, yet always question and remain open to new possibilities. These systems of control cannot grab us. We build a better world to come from new materials that displace the old.
In their fire, we are forged into something stronger, something new, something outside their system of control. And when we realize we do not need them anymore, they fade away like ashes in the wind.
A Benediction for the Children of Light
Blessed are the children of light, who are the mothers of it, who shine with an inner radiance that is compassion and life. Blessed are those who endure the fires of the world to be stronger and changed, ever questioning why a thing must be as it is. Because nothing must be. It only is.
Blessed be the light ever shining in all things, the eternal Word resonating throughout all creation. Let it fill us and flow through us, ever emptying out into the world from its inexhaustible well deep within.
Blessed be the world, born anew in every moment, living in the echoes of all that has come before.
May the incarnation ever live within us. May the light and life ever break forth from us, and may we never leave that holy Word, which is the discussion, the discourse that makes all things possible.
May the light fill the world and bring love and compassion everywhere it goes, driving out the darkness of fear and control before it like shadows before a searchlight.
May we find that peace that passes all understanding, where we come to know that the way we walk and dance and sing in this world brings it to life, and to life more abundantly.