PAUSING TO PONDER PEACEFULLY (The Holy Family)

“You have been trusted to look after something precious.

Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.”

(2 Timothy 1:14)

The Miraculous Icon of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa is very precious to the people of Poland where it has been venerated for about 600 years. One theory about its origin says that it was painted by St. Luke on a pine tabletop that came from the house of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Since today is their feast day, I’m staying with this connection to their home.

In early November my friend of almost 50 years, Father John Fitzpatrick entrusted his precious copy of the famous icon to me and in his honour I have brought it lovingly back to my home in Hastings where I pray before it every day. It’s not a print but has been painted onto a piece of timber that resembles a small door. It is signed and dated 1979 which is the year after St. John Paul II became Pope. Like millions of Poles he went on pilgrimage to the original Icon, even doing so secretly during World War II.

On the phone the other night I asked John where he got it and he told me it was given him by Rene Kluger, a Catholic who was the wife of the Polish patriot Jerzy Kluger who was a Jew and a lifelong friend of Karol Wojtyla who became Pope John Paul II. Jerzy is the author of the book ‘The Pope and I’. He and Rene lived in Rome for many years and were frequent guests of the Pope in the Vatican. She attended Mass in San Silvestro which is served by the Irish Pallottines and when she was no longer able to come to Mass, John would bring her Holy Communion at home.

The icon that I now possess originally belonged to the Pope St. John Paul himself and he gave it to Rene who gave it to John who gave it to me.

I am greatly touched by this fact – the fact that it is a relic of the Saint, and that John chose me to give it a home. It was precious to me because of its connection to John but its preciousness has deepened because it belonged to John Paul. It is a sign to me of God’s favour and I wonder who I am that the Mother of the Lord should come to me in this way. There is a lot of serendipity attached to my life, as a parishioner said to me last night.

Precious! You have been trusted to look after something precious. This is true of me now and it was even more true of Mary and Joseph who were trusted to look after the child Jesus. And of course they knew how absolutely precious a gift He was but somehow this knowledge, this feeling for Him deepened when they lost Him after their pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. Their desperate searching for Him, their distress is the deepening of their Love and, though they did not understand what Jesus was on about, they pondered and came to understand at a deeper level.

“And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.” (Luke 2:52)

This feast of the Holy Family is also precious to me because it is the name of the Parish in Mervue where I grew up, where my faith was shaped through the Mass and through the spiritual and social engagement of the Legion of Mary and the Pioneers.

And our Dad died on December 30th which was the Feast of the Holy Family 34 years ago. His was the first death in our immediate family and we definitely came to a deeper realization of how precious he was after he had gone.

It is the call of family, in particular the Christian family, to recognize and treasure the precious gift that we are to each other, given to each other by God - something that we can easily lose sight of in the tumble-dryer effect of fluctuating emotions, moods, hormones, fallings out, tragedies and loss.

Contemplating the Home of Nazareth, entering in there in spirit, pausing to ponder peacefully, we are offered the opportunity to recognize again the precious gift that we are to each other and to live out that spirit in a new and deeper way in our relationships. Even when someone does a good job at hiding their better nature we have to search and sometimes dig deep until we find, rediscover what is precious within them – and maybe even reveal to them, draw forth from them what they have forgotten of themselves.

EM Hastings December 29, 2024