This four-part series explores Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the aspect of their Hidden Life.
Namely by drawing on 2 Maccabees 2:4-8 which mentions how at the time of
the Babylonian conquest Jeremiah hid the tabernacle tent, ark of the
covenant and altar of incense in a cave. Part IV looks at how the disclosing of the glories of the Holy Family was prophesied from
old, and what the fulfillment of this prophecy should practically and spiritually mean
for us as Catholics today. The article ends with a poem titled, 'God Hides Precious Things.'
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| Stained glass from St. Mary's Basilica Phoenix, AZ (cropped), photograph by Lawrence OP. |
PART IV: JOINING THE HOLY HOUSE
1. The Prophesied Disclosing of the Holy Family
The unveiling of the Holy Family—Jesus as Living Tent,
Mary as Living Ark and Joseph as Living Altar—in the life of the Church is a
fulfillment of that prophecy uttered by Jeremiah and recorded in 2 Maccabees: “The
place [of the tent, ark and altar] shall be unknown until God gathers his
people together again and shows his mercy. And then the Lord will disclose
these things” (2:7-8). Sure, this prophecy may have its literal fulfillment
when the material items are revealed, but its spiritual and most lofty
fulfillment, relates to the revealing of the glories of the Holy Family and
their Hidden Life.
This ‘gathering together’ spoken of by Jeremiah has taken
place already in the Person of Jesus Christ, who by His life, death, resurrection,
and ascension was lifted up from the earth. As the Lord said: “When I am lifted
up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself” (Jn 12:32). Yet the power of
Jesus’ ‘gathering-in,’ accomplished in Him, the Head of the Church, is yet to
fully manifest itself in His Pilgrim Body, the Church on earth.
When the Church on earth has accomplished her mission of
spreading the Good News, lifting up the Name of Jesus to the highest degree—adoring
His Real Presence, and opening men’s minds to His love—then once that degree of
worship foreknown and ordained by God is reached, the ‘gathering-in’ will be
accomplished. In part, it will reach a degree of perfection beforehand at the
ingrafting of the Jewish People into the Catholic Church, prophesised in
Scripture and explicated by St. Paul in Romans 11. Yet fundamentally, during
this entire interim stage before the Second Coming, the Church perfects this
‘gathering-in’ by the power of the Spirit, wherever Jesus is lifted-up higher
and higher in the life of Her pilgrim members—most notably in her Saints.
The Church’s growing devotion and appreciation of Mary
and Joseph, the Saints among Saints, is thus essential to this task of lifting
Jesus “up from the earth”. For how else can the Body of the Church on earth
lift higher Christ who is her Head, other than by honouring and lifting-up Mary
its Neck, Throne-Seat of the Head, and Joseph its Spine, Pillar of this Throne?
There is no other way, and this is why God has manifested the truths about Mary
and Joseph in these latter days, and will continue to do so, because it is the
final step to lifting-up high the Name of Jesus. This is the Name which Mary
and Joseph utter with all their being more perfectly than us all. For it was to
Mary whom this Name Jesus was first revealed, and it was given to Joseph to
bestow the Name of Jesus (Lk 1:31; Mt 1:21). By learning about these parents of
Jesus, the first lovers of His Holy Name, and coming to devote ourselves to
them, we offer their very own perfect glorification of Jesus, to He who is our
Head.
The words of Jeremiah, “and then the Lord will disclose
these things” is thus being fulfilled in our time as we venture deeper into a devout
knowing of the Holy Family, whom God is disclosing to us in their individual distinctness
and trinal-unity of grace in these latter days. The Temple of the Church at
large, and our own interior temples, are fully furnished as it were, and the
perfection of our worship consolidated, when the Holy Family resides within
through conscious proclamation and devotion.
2. God Wants Not One, Not Two, But Three
The Holy Place from Moses’ to David’s time, and later the
ancient temple of Solomon which served as the holy tent itself, would not have
been complete without each of the three holy articles. All were essential to
the God ordained layout and functioning of the sacred liturgical services. Take
one element out, such as the ark or altar of incense, and it would not be how
God intended it. We only need consult the Books of Exodus and Leviticus to see the
careful precision of God in these matters. If the ancient Israelites were to
take one of these articles away for no reason, and went on with their rituals,
God would have been displeased with them for their failure to heed His designs.
All the same with the Holy Family. Having come to an awareness of the
importance of these three personages how can we neglect any one of them—namely
Mary and/or Joseph, as if we are doing God in Jesus Christ any favours by ignoring
the parents He chose.
3. The Mystery of the Holy Family
While it is true that God has, is and will reveal these
blessed persons as individuals and in their communal bond as Family, unmasking
as it were the glories of their Hidden Life; it is also true that the Holy
Family will always remain hidden. This is because no matter how much we come to
know them, we will never exhaust what can be known about them and the glories
of their life together.
In classical terms we speak of the mystery of the
Trinity. It is the fundamental and most important belief of Christianity, after
which comes the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. This then
leads us to the mystery of the Holy Spirit in His connection to the mystery of
the Church. Salvific (‘stuff about how we are saved’) and eschatological
(‘eternal stuff’) mysteries are necessarily entwined in these.
In the terrestrial realm the Holy Family stands as the
perfect created-embodiment of each of the central mysteries of faith: the Trinity,
Christ, and the Church. This is made possible because of Jesus, the Word
Incarnate, who in choosing Mary as Mother and Joseph as Earthly Father, made
them one moral and spiritual unit with the mystery of His Incarnation.
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| 'Holy Family,' Rafael Flores, 1857. |
There was also another effect—by choosing Mary and Joseph
and becoming a child under their charge, His Divinity anointed them, along with
His own humanity, with the Holy Spirit, to be made Living Icons of the Trinity.
The Son thus fashioned for Himself an earthly image of the Holy Trinity in the
Holy Family. Hence His own humanity was the Incarnation of Himself as Son,
while Mary was made the Living Icon of the Holy Spirit, and Joseph the Living
Icon of the Father. Sure, the whole Trinity was concentrated in Christ’s
humanity, “for in him all the fullness of the godhead dwells corporeally” (Col
2:9), but He gave Mary and Joseph a signal share in representing the Two Other
Persons of the Holy Trinity because that is what it pleased Him to do. He
wanted to be born into a family of three, just as He was eternally begotten in
the Family of Three. This is in keeping with God’s self-willed-impulse to
create man in His own image and likeness. Hence the Holy Trinity fashioned the
Holy Family to Their image and likeness on earth (Gen 1:26).
This Holy Family participated in the Godhead’s Trinal
Life on earth not as isolated individuals divorced from cultural patrimony or
spiritual communion, but as the consummative fulfillment of Israel and the
nucleus and beginning of the Holy Church. All because Mary and Joseph were
foundational members grafted indissolubly by grace to Its Head—to Christ their
Son, Head of the Church. A Church which began nowhere else but in Mary’s womb,
under Joseph’s care, and flourished secretly in their Holy House. Such that since
then and forevermore, this Blessed Family, called the Hypostatic-Order, the
highest order of the Church—a term predating, but employed by Pius XI[i]
and the esteemed Dominican Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange[ii]—and
the Incarnational-Circle by St. Laurence of Brindisi, together constitutes what
has been called the “Church in miniature (Ecclesia domestica),” the Domestic
Church, and what we might also call the Locus of the Church, Nucleus of the
Church, and Supreme Communal Typus of the Church.[iii]
These are titles which we can rightly bestow on the Holy
Family, and the meaning they seek to describe and imply helps us understand
something about them, something about who they are, and something about the
mystery God worked within them, and still works in them. But as we know, in the
traditional and deepest Christian sense, mysteries are not inaccessible, but
supreme realities to which God calls us to spiritually participate in.
4. Altera Domus Sancta
God hid the material articles of the temple, and He has partially
hid, and still partially hides, the Holy Family from the awareness of the
pilgrim Church. Even though much remains to be unveiled, the Holy Family has been
shown to the Church in glorious array, because the Lord God believes the Church
is ready to honour and appreciate them fittingly as He so desires and has
longed for.
We are also at a time where the family institution is
under attack, perhaps especially fatherhood—hence the belated and much needed
manifestation about St. Joseph. The demonic influence behind this attack against the family is highlighted by the words of the central seer of Fatima, the Servant of God Sr. Lucia, written to Cardinal Caffarra: "Father, a time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family." This attack has also harmed the outer-integrity of Holy Mother Church
in Her institutionality - marred by human sin, especially by some of its
prelates who are called to be spiritual fathers. This has only added terribly to the scale of injustice against children in our age, where children are not taught spiritual and moral truths, and where millions each year are aborted.
The perfect model of the Holy Family is thus needed more
than ever, and God knows this. The Holy Family is the antidote to our troubles. Pope St. Paul VI understood this, and so he says “The home of Nazareth is the
school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus – the school of the
Gospel [...] May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love,
its austere and simply beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character.”[iv] John Paul II echoed these sentiments, stating that the Holy Family is the “prototype
and example for all Christian families […] and it will not fail to help
Christian families—indeed, all the families in the world.”[v]
We are to apply these words not only to literal families, but religious communities,
parishes, and the Family of God itself—the Church. We need the Holy Family.
God has thus prepared the Church to come to a humble
realisation of our need of Jesus, not divorced from His Family, but with His
Family, and is calling us, as He has through His Vicars, in this time as His
Body, to renew that same submission of obedience and filial trust He as Head
gave to Mary and Joseph years ago. He wants us to do the same and live the
spirit of Nazareth, summarised is these words: "He went down with them and
came to Nazareth, and he submitted himself to them" (Lk 2:51).
How can we not beg the Lord to grant us the grace He is
offering in our time— to be able to welcome them into our interior abode,
families, communities and parishes, not simply as isolated figures, but
together as the Holy Family. Welcoming them in, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, to make
of our dwellings altera Domus Sancta, another Holy House, like at
Nazareth, where God is known, loved and served to utter perfection.
5. Hiding Ourselves in the Holy House
Indeed, what does it even mean to ‘live the spirit of
Nazareth,’ to live out the Hidden Life, and to allow our souls to become
another Holy House where the Trinity dwells, by means of the Holy Family
residing within? It means that while we open ourselves up to God’s revelation
and unveiling of Himself in the Holy Family in our minds, hearts and daily
lives, we must also allow ourselves to be concealed and hidden in the Mystery
who is our God, as He too is concealed and hidden in the Mystery which is the Holy
Family.
In other words, to truly immerse ourselves into our “eternal
God [who] is a dwelling place” (Deut 33:27) we must enter into the hiddenness
of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, into the Holy House of Nazareth, the Living Temple
where God’s Incarnate Presence dwelt, and where His Face was given flesh in
Christ. As it is written, “You shall hide them in the secret place of פָּנֶיךָ (your
face/presence)” (Ps 31:20).
St. John the Baptist presents us with a spiritual
disposition that acts like a key or passcode to enter the Holy House. It is
summarised when he declared: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30).
These words were applied to the Person of Jesus who is God, and God is a
Trinity of Persons. To invoke an idea mentioned earlier—the Holy Family is the
Living Communal Sacrament of the Holy Trinity. Therefore, to summarise what
allowing ourselves to be concealed and hidden in God in union with the Holy
Family is, we might say: “They must increase, but I must decrease,” “Jesus,
Mary and Joseph must increase, but I must decrease.”
This practically involves a disposition of heart that
subjugates all to the Holy Family, praying through them and living in communion
with them. In turn our personal imperfections, especially in our capacity to
love and worship, are eclipsed by Mary and Joseph, through whom we offer their
perfect love and worship uniquely as our own to God, in, with and through
Christ. Even the multitude of our acts, when entrusted to Mary and Joseph,
become purified and glorious, knitted to the perfect acts of the Holy Family—which
always have as their source, the humanity of Jesus, and as their summit, His
Divinity—so that our acts become a renewal of that perfect praise offered to
God in the Holy House all those years ago.
So as God continues to show case to the Church the Holy
Family, bringing out of the cavern of obscurity the glories of the New Tent,
New Ark and New Altar, we ourselves are being summoned into deeper hiddenness,
into deeper depths of intimacy with God, as manifested and mediated through the
Holy Family.
Their Holy House is the Cavern of Hiddenness, the Place
of Concealment. It is here God became man and revealed Himself by concealing
Himself in a hidden life of ordinariness. (Blrr-di-blrr, re-read that!) This
Holy House must become our home. A room has been prepared for us in it (Jn
14:2-3). To us this Holy House is not a clay building, but the reality of God
Himself, in whom Jesus, Mary and Joseph, lived and moved and had their being.
In Spirit let us join Mary and Joseph and speak Word to
Word as they would have, day after day, night after night. Let our lips be as
nimble as the pen of the scribe, confessing to our God and King the longing of
our heart (Ps 45:1) in words not unlike those that would have been uttered by
Mary and Joseph:
Thou art my hiding place, thou
dost preserve me from distress, with songs of deliverance thou dost surround
me. Thou art my hiding place and my shield; I hope in thy word. For the hidden
things belong to Adonai our God and it is the glory of God to hide a thing, but
it is the glory of kings to search for a thing. Thus draw me after you, let us
make haste. The King has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and
rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love
you. (Ps 32:7; 119:14; Deut 29:29; Prov 25:2; Song 1:4).
And to those who hide in Him, as did Mary and Joseph, these
are words Jesus our Beloved King whispers within:
O my dove, in the clefts of the
rock, in the hidden places of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your
voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is comely.
So even while we seek the hidden face of God, God seeks
out our face, marred by sin but loved by Him. Yet for the face He finds in the
hidden clefts of His Holy House, made childlike in the lap of Joseph and bosom
of Mary, He sees in our face nothing but the splendour of His Son’s visage.
6. Conclusion
We’ve covered a lot while hardly touching on anything. It
makes us think, who even knows what it means to dwell in the Holy House, to live
out the Hidden Life of the Holy Family? At least God does, and He has assigned
Joseph as the Master of this House, Head of this Family, and the Custodian of
Its Life. If we “go to Joseph” (Gen 41:55), as Porter he will let us in, and as
a Spiritual Father, he will teach us the ropes—somehow, someway,
in our prayer lives and normal living.
One thing is for sure, it sure is beautiful; and those
who ask to abide therein, shall abide therein; those who seek for it, shall
find it; and those who knock upon its door, will have it opened to them and
shall learn what it means to be loved.
Since the soul who desires to “dwell in the house of the
LORD all the days” of her life (Ps 27:4), in union with Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
shall by faith be efficaciously welcomed-in. They shall come to make a home
within this Home of Homes—the Holy Place of the Temple of the Church. Even the
most sinful soul, plagued by enemies, that is, riddled with countless
imperfections, will find a refuge in this Holy House, a warm and ready Seat of
Mercy, at the Table of the Lord where the Bread of Life, Chalice of Salvation
and Lamb of God lay spread for a banquet. As the Psalmist exclaims:
For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent, he will
set me high upon a rock. And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies
round about me; and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I
will sing and make melody to the LORD. (Ps 27:5-6).
This is the hymn of those who through true devotion to
Mary and Joseph have been especially engrafted into the Humanity of Christ, as
quasi-appendages of the Order of the Hypostatic-Union. Quite simply, it is the psalm
of those adopted into the Holy Family and who live under the shelter of their
Home—the Trinity’s abode.
18. Poem: 'God Hides Precious Things'
A poem that
touches on the various themes explored within this series.
God
hides precious things
in
the hollows and in the dens
in
cavernous mountains
out
of sight of men.
And
so He commanded
old
Jeremias
to
flee the barbarous hand
to
hide away the ark,
the
altar, the sacred tent
in
Nebo or Sinai’s peak
‘neath
Moses-feet
where
once they stood
wrapped
in cloud.
And
so in turn
the
Father High
hid
away His Virgin Ark,
tent-pitched
Son
and
Altar Man,
in
a cave ‘neath David’s feet
away
from men
beside
the hen
and
stable sheep.
And
only there the shepherd greet
the
Shepherd Priest
from
Palace of the empyrean,
Temple
of the Trinity
where
angels feast,
while
here it’s grain the cattle feed
in
cave unseen
by
mortal men
until
the time where all shall know,
when
God shall show,
the
glory of the Infant Bread,
the
grain, the Manna Moses fed
to
flock of Israel folk,
that
then and now and evermore
shall
adore,
to
taste on wood
where
manger stood
and
does as Altar grand
in
Joseph’s hands
the
Lamb of God,
a
little child
tabernacled
in the Ark,
locked
by David’s Key—
the
Lamb who seals and shows.
For
Key, the Grain, the Lock of Wool
_in
Joseph’s right, and Ark in mighty left,
carried
from House of Bread,
on
shoulders to Egypt fled,
then
planted, borne, tilled and sown
in
Nazareth’s bed
as
godly garden closed,
an
Orchard House
where
Cedar Tree as Life did grow
from
graceful juice of Fruit did flow,
gilded
wood of Ark and Altar
golden
all gold,
hidden,
shut
in
Treasury Royal and closed like tomb.
Yet
Risen King raised up an Eliakim,[vi]
to seal,
unseal, close and ope’,
and
Hand he wields
this
Joseph who bears and shares
the
secret of the King Who’s God
and
so marvellously reveals
the
Revealer he hides
in frankincense
mist
Who’s
Infant Lamb that like Lion cries;
since
weighed and measured and found just
he
passes on the Voice’s key,
raises
higher he!
tearing
open gate of skies,
the
Woman shines!
the
firmaments' jaws where honey lies—
Jeremiah
points and shows,
Samson
shouts, every Egypt-idol quakes
and
Apep dies,[vii]
while
Enoch, Elijah rise from street with happy sighs
as lightning
cracks and whips
the
Temple New
revealing
Mountain’s view.
So
opened now, cavern dark,
what
every prophet yearned to see:
Living
Tent, Ark and Altar,
Jesus,
Mary and Joseph—
Earthly
Trinity
and
living quite ordin’ry—
the
Holy Family.
This marks the end of this series.
For more on the Holy Family click here regarding Devotion to the Three Hearts.
[i]
‘March 19, 1935, Pius XI, speaking in honour of another French nun, Émilie de
Vialar, founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition’: “Indeed, it is
impossible to attain anything higher than the level of the hypostatic union,
the personal union of God with man… No glory can surpass that of the revelation
of the hypostatic of the divine Word… St. Joseph received this revelation.”
Consecration to St. Joseph (PDF), Society of Saint Pius X, p.7, http://www.sspx.com.au/Consecration_To_St_Joseph.pdf
(A great resource, however I do not agree nor endorse those views of the SSPX that
undermine the authority of the Papacy and Magesterium, and the validity of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo).
[ii]
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Mother of the Saviour and our Interior
Lives, Part II, Chp VII.
[iii]
As quoted by John Paul II in Redemptoris Custos, 7 (vi).
[iv]
See CCC 533 from Paul IV, A homily given by Pope Paul VI in Nazareth, 1964.
[v]
John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, On the Role of the Christian Family in
the Modern World, Apostolic Exhortation, Nov 22 1981, 86,
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html
[vi]
Eliakim (אֶלְיָקִים): A name meaning ‘risen/lifted up by God’
or ‘resurrection of God’. See Is 22:20.
[vii]
Apep, the Egyptian god of chaos, depicted as a giant serpent.
