Ordinary Work

Feast of the Holy Family A-1

Entrance Antiphon Lk 2: 16 The shepherds went in haste, and found Mary and Joseph and the Infant lying in a manger.

Collect O God, who were pleased to give us the shining example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practicing the virtues of family life and in the bonds of charity, and so, in the joy of your house, delight one day in eternal rewards. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128:1-5; Colossians 3:12-21; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

After the Magi had departed, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph, saying: “Arise, and take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt and remain there until I tell you. Herod will seek the child to destroy him.” Joseph arose and took the child and his mother by night and retired into Egypt. He was there until the death of Herod in order that it might be fulfilled what the Lord had said by the prophet: Out of Egypt have I called my son. When Herod died an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt saying: “Arise, and take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel. Those who sought the life of the child are dead.” Joseph arose and took the child and his mother and came into the land of Israel. But hearing that Archelaus reigned in Judea in place of Herod his father he was afraid to go there. Being warned in a dream he retired to Galilee. There he dwelt in a town called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was said by prophets: He shall be called a Nazarene. (Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23)

Ordinary Work There is one very notable feature about bees and ants. It is that they seem to be unceasingly active. We speak of a person being “as busy as a bee.” Action. Activity. Movement seems to be at the heart of the universe. Indeed, the consideration of the world’s movement constitutes, in the philosophical thought of St Thomas Aquinas, a Way to God. Within the things of our experience there is a basic drive to be in action, which is to say a striving for the perfection of its nature in one or other sense. The characteristic posture of things seems not to be one of rest but of activity. When we look at man we see a similar pattern. The human person seems to be an acting person — that is, one who is at work — and if he is not in action, it generally looks as though he is in decline or will decline. His greatest pride lies in what he manages to do and if he has the sense that he is achieving little or nothing, this constitutes a crisis for his sense of meaning. But now, we also see in vast numbers of persons in the great stream of human history, very little by way of great and striking deeds. If action — let us call it work — is what man seems to be made for, what is to be said of those countless numbers of persons who seem to get so little done? By this I mean that there are so very many whose activity is on a very small scale and who never do what an observer might call very much. They yearn for significance and they hope that their lives will be of value. Yet their work in life turns out to be small‑scale, humdrum, rather hidden, and only a very small element in the gigantic action of the universe. Yes, life has its achievements and joys, but snapping at its heels is the recurring thought that it has all been futile and disappointing. It is marked by a lot of failure and unrealized dreams. For very many, perhaps we could say for the average person, there seems to be not a lot for him to be proud of and not much that he does that will ever bring the admiration of others. In a word, typically the life of man is characteristically very ordinary. So one question facing everyone is, how can his or her ordinary life become something great and beautiful?

On this question, as on every other great question, we have a Light. That Light is Christ and he is the life of every man, woman and family. Today we think of the holy family of Nazareth, Jesus, Mary his mother, and Joseph his foster‑father and husband of Mary. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are given two chapters in the Gospel of St Matthew and two chapters in the Gospel of St Luke, and each of these Gospel accounts is very different. But together they present us with the fact of the holy family of Nazareth, a family beyond compare in the annals of holiness. From this family came forth the King of kings and Lord of lords to whom all authority in heaven and on earth was given. What could we say is the especially notable thing about their family life during those many years at Nazareth? It is that their lives were very ordinary indeed. It was small‑time, small‑scale, unnoticed, and if the historian were pressed to give his verdict on it he would say it contained nothing of significance in the main. He might even say their life was a little meaningless — in view of the important work to be done, namely the salvation of the world. So the holy family was very much part of the stream of mankind and moved shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the little people of history. But does this not tell us that there is, in the divine plan, a greatness to be discovered and achieved precisely in the ordinary things? God means the little person to be great in his sight precisely in his littleness and ordinariness. If God became man and spent so much time doing nothing other than what the ordinary person does — going to a small‑time school, worshipping at home and with his community in a small-time synagogue, doing his daily work, being part of his immediate and extended family life — then in the main greatness is to be sought there. The ordinary person will be great in the sight of God by doing the ordinary things in the way the Son of God made man did them, and indeed doing them in loving union with the Son of God made man. The holy family teaches every man and woman and every family the grandeur of the ordinary life if lived in imitation of this same holy family, and their secret was to have done God’s will.

All this is to say that every family ought strive to acquire and live the spirit of the holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Every baptized person has been granted the gift of the Holy Spirit. This same Holy Spirit animated and guided the holy family. He is the Spirit of Jesus and he filled the hearts of Mary and Joseph. He has been given to us at our baptism. Let us be content in the ordinariness of our lives, but making all our actions and all our work something very holy in the way the holy family did. If we sanctify our activity and our work by seeking God’s will in everything, we shall sanctify ourselves, and we shall sanctify others for whom we do our work.

(E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.530, 2196-2233 (Fourth Commandment)

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