The Holy Family

The Holy Family

Today is the feast of The Holy Family, one of those feasts that are so Catholic; it is not a feast of an event, it is from "The Feasts of Ideas." The gospel involves the astonishing loss of the young child by his parents on a trip back from Jerusalem, something that would be a felony nowadays. He is found teaching the teachers and seems curiously dismissive of his parents' anxiety, as if just outside of empathy, looking in.

This is Thom Gunn's "Jesus and His Mother:"

My only son, more God's than mine,

Stay in this garden ripe with pears.
The yielding of their substance wears
A modest and contented shine:
And when they weep in age, not brine
But lazy syrup are their tears.
"I am my own and not my own."

He seemed much like another man,
That silent foreigner who trod
Outside my door with lily rod:
How could I know what I began
Meeting the eyes more furious than
The eyes of Joseph, those of God?
I was my own and not my own.

And who are these twelve labouring men?
I do not understand your words:
I taught you speech, we named the birds,
You marked their big migrations then
Like any child. So turn again
To silence from the place of crowds.
"I am my own and not my own."

Why are you sullen when I speak?
Here are your tools, the saw and knife
And hammer on your bench. Your life
Is measured here in week and week
Planed as the furniture you make,
And I will teach you like a wife
To be my own and all my own.

Who like an arrogant wind blown
Where he pleases, does without content?
Yet I remember how you went
To speak with scholars in furred gown.
I hear an outcry in the town;
Who carries this dark instrument?
"One all his own and not his own."

Treading the green and nimble sward,
I stare at a strange shadow thrown.
Are you the boy I bore alone,
No doctor near to cut the cord?
I cannot reach to call you Lord,
Answer me as my only son.
"I am my own and not my own."