Word of the Week

Holy Family Sunday

Stature: Helikia (Gk.): meaning, “stature, in height and comeliness of stature”. This word also conveys an adult age of maturity, an attained state fit for a thing.

Christ became human in all things, but sin, and as such, it was necessary for him to “inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience” (CCC, 437). Consequently, Christ is born of a woman in Mary and “grows in stature and wisdom” (Lk.2:52) in “the bosom of the holy family of Joseph and Mary” (CCC, 1655, 437). By his obedience to Mary and Joseph, as well as by his humble work during the long years in Nazareth, Jesus gives us the example of holiness in the daily life of family and work (CCC, 564). Furthermore, “The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life” (CCC, 533).

The Greek helikia, can be found eight times in the New Testament. John uses the term twice in the healing of the blind man. Specifically, to addresses the blind man’s credibility by being “of age” in his witness to what Christ did for him (cf. Jn.9:21-23). In Paul’s lone usage, he encourages the faithful to grow in “stature” by attaining the knowledge of unity in truth to avoid the winds that unsettle us in our daily lives (Eph.4:13) (Hahn, and Minch, 42). In this case, Paul’s application of stature appears to be congruent with a maturity that comes in knowing Christian doctrine. In addition to John and Paul, we have Luke’s account of the term in the popular story of the boy Jesus in the temple (Lk.2:41-52). There are numerous details that one could account for in this story, I would like to just draw out one as it pertains to Christ’s growth in stature. Notice that Christ was “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Lk.2:47). Now these teachers were learned Rabbi’s who had years of training in understanding the law and the prophets, and here is this young man who “astonishes” (Lk.2:48) these high ranking educators. I believe this is a great testimony to the Holy Family and how the domestic church is called to be the first school of educators. Furthermore, it is of great importance to appreciate Luke insertion of Christ’s obedience to his earthly family, because obedience always precedes growth in “wisdom and stature” (Lk.2:51-52) in the Christian journey.

On the heels of Christmas day, and still reflecting upon the mystery of life itself during the Christmas season, the Church offers for us an opportunity to reflect into the importance of family as it relates to life by celebrating the Solemnity of the Holy Family. ‘The hidden life of Nazareth’ opens the door for man to begin to appreciate the whole dynamic of family life. Never to be sanctioned for public display or treated as something less than sacred, the family is the cell of society and becomes so when it models the quiet of Nazareth. Hidden away was the silence of the holy family praying, working, educating, and building up a culture of love and truth that would ultimately send forth the savior of the world. Today’s family is to aspire towards this same simplicity and austerity in its daily duties to build up men and woman of faith that are ready to reconstruct our cities and dioceses into Christian outposts of truth and love.

 

“The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus - the school of the Gospel.”

--Pope Paul VI

Primary Texts Consulted

•  Catholic Bible. Suggested trans. Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
•  Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, 1997.
• Hahn, Scott and Minch, Curtis. Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and Ephesians, RSV, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002.

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