February 9 - The Un-Holy Family?

Mary and Joseph: At odds or taking a break?

By Magdalena I. García

At our house, my husband A. is our designated duster. He inherited this chore in part because I have allergies, and in part because I dislike noisy machines, so I refuse to get near the vacuum cleaner (the blender and the food processor are the limit for my electro-domestic noise tolerance). And you can always tell when A. has cleaned house not so much by the sparkle on furniture and mirrors, but by the lopsided pictures and turned around decorations.

This week, after A.’s dusting day, I came home to find an unsightly picture in one of my nativity scenes: Mary and Joseph had their backs to each other, and neither one was keeping an eye on Baby Jesus! I was struck. How can this be? The un-Holy Family? Time to close the blinds and lock the doors, before DCFS (the Department of Children and Family Services) takes a peek, or the Baby Jesus might end up in foster care! Hopefully, Mary and Joseph were just taking a break from their perennial watch over the manger, just to promote the health of their own eyesight!

Most of us think that “to be holy” means to be saintly, godly, pious, devout, or at least religious. But in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures “to be holy” also means to be set apart, to be consecrated. So what makes Mary, Joseph and Jesus the Holy Family is that they were indeed set apart by God for a specific purpose. And whether or not you can stomach the virgin birth narrative, God’s specific purpose for Mary and Joseph included that they embrace each other—despite obstacles—and that they care for the infant Jesus.

Needless to say, in a society plagued by child neglect and abuse, we need the image of the Holy Family: even if it translates into Mary, Mabel and Baby Jesse, or José, Juan and Baby Chuy (pronounced chew-y, a Mexican nickname for Jesus). The point here is not to exalt one sexual orientation over the other. The point is that we need children to grow up in holy families, and by that I mean adults set apart for the purpose of looking after the wellbeing of children.