Christ Gives Us Everything, Including His Own Family

Another grandchild has arrived. The familiar family conversation begins almost immediately. Whose eyes does the baby have? Whose smile? Whose temperament? Families hand on more than DNA. They hand on memories, customs, prayers, and ways of seeing the world.

God could have redeemed us in any number of ways. He chose to enter one particular family, one particular people, one particular history.

Christ does not merely redeem us from a distance. He gives us everything that is His. His Body. His Blood. His Church. And, astonishingly, His own family: His Mother, His foster father Joseph, His grandparents Joachim and Anne, His Apostles.

This truth was already explored in an earlier reflection on Saints Joachim and Anne. That piece remains relevant because the grandparents of the Lord root the Holy Family inside Israel’s concrete history. The same God who prepared Joachim and Anne also prepared their daughter to become the Mother of God.¹

St. Thomas Aquinas stated a principle that illuminates the entire mystery: grace builds upon nature. It does not destroy it. God did not erase the humanity He created. He elevated it and perfected it. The Incarnation is the greatest expression of that truth. The humanity Christ assumed was not generic. It was particular, rooted in a real family and a real people.²

Mary is Jewish. Joseph is Jewish. Jesus is raised as a faithful Jewish child who keeps the feasts and lives inside Israel’s worship and hope.

We rightly call Mary the Mother of God because the Child she bore is fully God and fully man. Yet we sometimes forget something ordinary and beautiful: she remained the same Jewish daughter of Israel whom God prepared from all eternity for that vocation.

Catholics are not alone in contemplating this mystery. The Orthodox have preserved an especially rich meditation on the life of the Theotokos. Their tradition consistently presents Mary as the faithful Daughter of Zion, formed within the worship, Scriptures, and hope of Israel before she became the Mother of God. The Life of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, compiled by Holy Apostles Convent and Dormition Skete, places her firmly inside the living faith of her people:

“Joachim and Anna were pious Israelites from the royal line of David… God blessed Joachim and Anna with further wealth because of their generosity, but despite all this wealth and status, Anna was disgraced by childlessness… When Mary turned three, Joachim and Anna brought her to the Temple… She walked up the steps without any help. This was a very wondrous and blessed moment: this child, Mary, was to become the Temple of the Lord.”³

N.T. Wright’s historical work offers a helpful bridge. He emphasizes that Mary stands inside Israel’s long hope and that Jesus fulfills Israel’s story rather than replacing it. Commenting on the Magnificat, Wright writes:

“Mary and Elisabeth shared a dream. It was the ancient dream of Israel: the dream that one day all that the prophets had said would come true. One day Israel’s God would do what he had said to Israel’s earliest ancestors: all nations would be blessed through Abraham’s family.”⁴

St. Paul already states the heart of the matter with clarity:

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. (Romans 9:4-5)

The image of the olive tree later in the same letter (Romans 11:17-24) fits the principle already stated. Grace does not uproot what God has planted. It grafts, sustains, and perfects.⁵

St. Irenaeus, writing before the later divisions of East and West, described Christ’s saving work through the doctrine of recapitulation. The Lord does not discard the history that prepared Him. He gathers it up, brings it to its proper end, and makes it new.⁶ The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses the same continuity when it speaks of the fullness of time, the reasons the Word became flesh, Mary’s place in the Incarnation, and the enduring relationship of the Church to the Jewish people.⁷

The argument begins in wonder. The correction follows from gratitude. Christians can never contemplate the Holy Family with gratitude while speaking of the Jewish people with contempt. Christ has given us everything, including His own family.

Christians rightly condemn genuine wrongdoing wherever it occurs, whether committed by Jews, Catholics, Protestants, governments, clergy, or ordinary citizens. Justice requires that individuals answer for their own actions. What Christianity rejects is the temptation to assign collective guilt to an entire people. We rightly object when Catholics are judged by the crimes of a few. We should extend the same justice to others.

Every age has its characteristic spiritual dangers. In ours, many arrive not only through what we see, but through the voices we repeatedly allow to shape our thinking. We carry an endless stream of those voices in our pockets. Not every voice deserves a hearing.

Christians have long practiced custody of the eyes and custody of the tongue. In the digital age we must also practice custody of the mind. Habitual exposure to voices that cultivate collective suspicion or contempt is not serious inquiry. It is poor spiritual hygiene.

The essay began with the ordinary joy of expecting a new grandchild and noticing family resemblance. It ends with the greater gift.

St. Paul has already said it:

…of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ.

That is why Christians can never contemplate the Holy Family with gratitude while speaking of the Jewish people with contempt. Christ has given us everything, including His own family.

Notes

1. Karen Early, “Saints & Blesseds Vocations That Give Hope II,” Fides et Ratio, August 2022, https://fidesetratio.us/saints-blesseds-vocations-that-give-hope-ii/.
2. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2: “gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit” (“grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it”).
3. Holy Apostles Convent, The Life of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos (Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent and Dormition Skete, 1989). Traditional accounts of Joachim and Anna and the Presentation of Mary in the Temple.
4. N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press), on Luke 1:39–56 (the Magnificat).
5. Romans 9–11, especially 9:4-5 and 11:17-24 (the olive tree image).
6. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, on the recapitulation of all things in Christ (esp. Book III and related passages).
7. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), nos. 422–423, 456–460, 487–507, 839–840, and 1093–1096.