Mary and Joseph: a married couple to imitate in difficult times

Discovering the Holy Family, and especially getting to know and love the future mother and father of Jesus, is a precious experience for each of us, because Mary and Joseph have so much to tell us about how we can accept God's plan, with all the challenges this can entail in our daily lives.

Sometimes we think that everything was easy for Mary and Joseph because they were always in God's hand. Easy for them? Really? If we look at what happened in the first 24 months that followed their first meeting(1), we see that they were constantly confronted with successive trials, frightening by their intensity.

Far from distancing them from us, the way in which Mary and Joseph lived through these overwhelming moments makes them even closer to us by their humanity: they are a true model for difficult times. And their role as a model is willed by God, if we recall that "God wants the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary", Queen of Heaven and Earth, and that Saint Joseph is the patron saint of the Holy Family, of good death, of workers, and also the patron saint of the universal Church.

Jacques de la Bastide. Contributor, Mary of Nazareth

Excerpt from an article published in 2016 in the magazine Ave Maria: “A look at the trials of Mary and Joseph during the first 24 months of their life together”

(1) In particular, Mary's pregnancy before they lived together, then the necessity to flee to Egypt to protect the life of the Child