Feast of the Holy Family (28/12/2025)

Rembrandt's painting of the Holy Family with Angels is now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

And there we witness a thoroughly domestic scene.

The context is not Bethlehem's stable but Joseph's workshop where the carpenter is bent over his bench surrounded by his tools and focused on shaping a yoke with his axe.

Perhaps it is that easy yoke of which his son will one day speak.

Mary sits on a low chair her left foot on a foot warmer, and leans over the cradle to adjust its curtain with one hand.

In her other hand, she holds an open book, perhaps reading the prophecies about her son.

The baby lies asleep under a red fur-lined coverlet.

Above them angels flutter down upon beams of heavenly light, suggesting God's providence amidst this intensely human scene, and pointing to Christ as the light of the world.

Each actor is doing their bit.

Joseph through his labour, Mary through nurture and prayer, the angels through keeping guard, the child sleeping in heavenly peace.

So much about Christmas is spectacular.

There are angelic annunciations to Joseph, Mary and the shepherds.

There's a comet followed by Magi and their retinues.

There's talk of the emperor, the governor and the local king, their bureaucracies and soldiers.

There's heavenly music and gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

As angels sing the first Gloria in excelsis, we see a splendid vision of God glorified and humanity at peace.

Supernatural hope for our broken world.

Yet Rembrandt's picture suggests a much more familiar, intimate, even mundane kind of hope.

The kind that sustains a family day by day.

The hope that our work matters.

that our children will grow up safe, that our love will endure, that God and his angels will be at hand when needed.

In this sense, family life can be a nursery of hope.

It is where first we learn that there is more to the universe than ourselves.

That we are not islands but parts of a greater whole.

That there are people we can lean on who in turn rely on us.