Pray with Us: An Act of Consecration to the Holy Family

By Amanda MacMurtrie

As we approach Valentine’s Day, it’s hard to miss the huge, pink hearts and sweet words our culture uses to celebrate. All of these love songs, handwritten notes, and chocolate do tell us something of love: love is meant to be shared; it interacts with all of our senses; it is something to be expressed. As Catholics, the month of February is dedicated especially to the Holy Family.

We know, of course, that love is much more substantial than flowers and social cues alone. The dedication to the Holy Family is a tradition that honors both the divine and human dimensions of Christ’s life with Mary and Joseph. In meditating upon the Holy Family, we remember that we are each made for communion. The interaction of love between Mary, Joseph, and Jesus mirrors the Trinity in radical, out-pouring love for one another – while also testifying to the dignity of ordinary days that all families know in one way or another. It is precisely in those ordinary days that the image of Christ emerges.

St. John Paul II describes this love as the fundamental task of the family: “to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator – that of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person.” – Familiaris Consortio

The life and love of the Holy Family:

In their traveling, exile, and hiddenness, the Holy Family knew stressful situations and unanticipated hardship as much as they knew the mundane realities of this earthly life. They knew what it was to be tired and poor, how to make friends with their neighbors and care for their community. They surely also knew laughter and joy, safety and belonging. The Holy Family never grew weary of learning to love the hearts present before them. In their love for each other and faithfulness to God the Father, they sanctified even the simplest tasks of daily living.

Do you see your life in theirs? A life of simplicity, obedience to God, and abundant joy? Where do you feel God calling you to grow in trust?

Does imagining this loving family bring pain or sorrow? What might your lonely or fearful heart long for, that the Holy Family can lovingly show you?

Let’s turn our hearts now to the Holy Family in an Act of Consecration, as we gaze upon their hearts:

Act of Consecration

O Jesus, our most loving Redeemer,
who having come to enlighten the world with Your teaching and example,
willed to pass the greater part of Your life in humility and subjection
to Mary and Joseph in the poor home of Nazareth,
thus sanctifying the Family that was to be an example for all Christian families,
graciously receive our family as it dedicates and consecrates itself to Thee this day.
Protect us, guard us and establish among us Your holy fear,
true peace and concord in Christian love:
in order that by living according to the divine pattern of Your family we may be able,
all of us without exception, to attain to eternal happiness.

Mary, dear Mother of Jesus and Mother of us, by kindly intercession, make this our humble offering acceptable in the sight of Jesus, and obtain for us His graces and blessings.

O Saint Joseph, most holy Guardian of Jesus and Mary, help us by thy prayers in all our spiritual and temporal needs; that so we may be enabled to praise our divine Savior Jesus, together with you and Mary, for all eternity.

Our Father..
Hail Mary..
Glory Be..

Amen.

Make it Visible! Bring the Holy Family image into Your Home…

Consider how you can bring more of the Holy Family’s love and life into your home. Grab your own print of Home from the Visual Grace Shop!

We can go even deeper in prayer and relationship with sacred glimpses of the Holy Family’s home life. In Cena, we see Jesus learning about Passover around the family table, while Paternitas pulls back the veil on Joseph and Jesus’s shared workshop.

Check out the shop for more of Kate’s original paintings that feature moments with the Holy Family.