Holy! Family...Couple celebrate the birth of their 100th grand child

Daily Herald Tribune of Alberta


Super-size family: Heinrich and Tatjana Urich hold their two-week old son, Henry. Henry is their 9th child and Heinrich's parents, Aneta (far left) and Viktor (far right) now have 100 grandchildren

Viktor and Aneta Urich reached the mark courtesy of daughter-in-law Tatjana, who gave birth to Henry two weeks ago, the Daily Herald Tribune of Alberta reported.

It was Tatjana's ninth child with husband Heinrich - their oldest child is 12.

Heinrich himself is the fifth of Viktor and Aneta’s 16 children.

Viktor was born in Russia and moved to Germany at the age of 29 before moving to Canada 17 years ago.

"We were happy and we were waiting for it. We want to have a party in the church with all the family together," Viktor was quoted as saying.

He shares so may grandchildren with his wife that they struggle to remember all of their names.

"Half the grandchildren have Canadian names and the other half have Russian ones, which can get confusing," Viktor said.

Fortunately, Heinrich says providing for his nine children is not a burden financially. Finding a baby sitter is not hard either.

"We get along fine. We don't drink. We don't smoke and any money that's left over is for our family," he said.

When it comes to grandchildren, the Urich's are not the only couple to hit the century mark.

In 2005, Norwegians Randi and Filip Bekkevold celebrated the birth of their 100th grandchild and Bai Ulan of the Philippines is reported to have 107 grandchildren and 138 great-grandchildren.

Nazareth, School of the Gospel

Tribute of Pope Paul VI to the Mother of God, and Our Mother, the Virgin Mary

Pilgrimage to the Holy LandBasilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth

January 5, 1964

At Nazareth Our very first thoughts must be turned toward Mary Most Holy, to offer her the tribute of Our devotion and to nourish that devotion with reflections that will make it genuine, profound and unique, in conformity with the plan of God. It is Mary who is full of grace, who is the Immaculate, the ever-virgin, the Mother of Christ and hence God’s Mother and ours, she who was assumed into heaven, our most blessed Queen, the model for the Church and our hope.

Before all else We offer Our humble filial promise to venerate her with that special devotion which recognizes the wonders God has accomplished in her; with singular homage manifesting the most holy, pure affectionate, personal and confident movements of Our Heart; with such devotion as causes her encouraging example of human perfection to shine upon the world from on high.

Then We present to her Our requests for what is closest to Our heart, because We wish to honor both her goodness and the power of her love and intercession. We pray that she may preserve in our hearts a sincere devotion to her. We beg her to give us understanding, desire, and then the peace of possessing purity of body and soul, purity in thought and word, art and love; the purity that the world of today attempts to shock and violate; the purity to which Christ has linked one of His promises, one of His beatitudes, that of penetrating into the vision of God Himself.

We ask therefore the favor of joining Our Lady, mother of the home at Nazareth, and her humble but courageous husband St. Joseph, in their intimacy with Jesus Christ, her human and divine Son.

Nazareth – school of the Gospel

Nazareth is the school in which we begin to understand the life of Jesus. It is the school of the Gospel. Here we learn to observe, to listen, to meditate, and to penetrate the profound and mysterious meaning of that simple, humble, and lovely manifestation of the Son of God. And perhaps we learn almost imperceptibly to imitate Him. Here we learn the method by which we can come to understand Christ.

 Here we discover the need to observe the milieu of His sojourn among us – places, period of time, customs, language, religious practices, all of which Jesus used to reveal Himself to the world. Here everything speaks to us; everything has meaning. Everything possesses twofold significance.

“The letter” …

The first is exterior, that which the spectators’ senses and perceptiveness can immediately derive from the Gospel scene. It is the impression gained by those who look merely at externals, who study and examine only the philological and historical trappings of the holy books, that part of which in Biblical terminology is called “the letter.” This study is important and necessary, but it is opaque to one who stops there, and even capable of engendering illusions and intellectual pride in the observer who approaches the external elements in the Gospel without clear vision, humility, a good intention, and a prayerful spirit.

... and “the spirit”

There is also an interior significance – that is, the revelation of divine truth, of supernatural reality – which the Gospel not only contains but also manifests, though, to be sure, only to the person who puts himself in harmony with its light. This harmony is due partly to uprightness of spirit, that is of mind and heart – a subjective and human condition which depends on the personal initiative of each person. At the same time it flows from the mysterious, free, and unmerited outpouring of grace, which, in keeping with the mystery of mercy governing mankind’s destiny, is never lacking; indeed, at the proper time and in the appropriate manner it never fails any man of good will. This second element, distinct from “the letter” of the Gospel, is called the “the spirit.”

It is here, in this school, that one comes to grasp how necessary it is to be spiritually disciplined, if one wishes to follow the teachings of the Gospel and to become a follower of Christ. Oh, how We would like to repeat, so close to Mary, Our introduction to the genuine knowledge of the meaning of life, and to the higher wisdom of divine truth!

But Our steps here are hurried, and We must take leave of Our desire to pursue here this never-ending education in understanding of the Gospel. Nevertheless, We cannot depart without recalling briefly and fleetingly some fragments of the lesson of Nazareth.

The lesson of silence…

The lesson of silence: may there return to us an appreciation of this stupendous and indispensable spiritual condition, deafened as we are by so much tumult, so much noise, so many voices of our chaotic and frenzied modern life. O silence of Nazareth, teach us recollection, reflection, and eagerness to heed the good inspirations and words of true teachers; teach us the need and value of preparation, of study, of meditation, of interior life, of secret prayer seen by God alone.

… of domestic life

The lesson of domestic life: may Nazareth teach us the meaning of family life, its harmony of love, its simplicity and austere beauty, its sacred and inviolable character; may it teach is how sweet and irreplaceable is its training, how fundamental and incomparable its role on the social plane.

… of work

The lesson of work: O Nazareth, home of “the carpenter’s son,” We want here to understand and to praise the austere and redeeming law of human labor, here to restore the consciousness of the dignity of labor, here to recall that work cannot be an end in itself, and that it is free and ennobling in proportion to the values – beyond the economic ones – which motivate it. We would like here to salute all the workers of the world, and to point out to them their great Model, their Divine Brother, the Champion of all their rights, Christ the Lord!

And so Our thoughts leave Nazareth and range those mountains of Galilee which once provided the natural backdrop for the words of the Divine Teacher. We lack time and sufficient strength to proclaim at this moment the divine message intended for the entire universe. But We cannot neglect to glance at the nearby mount of the beatitudes, which are the synthesis and summit of evangelical preaching, and to listen to the echoes of that discourse which, in this mysterious atmosphere, now seem audible to Us.

The motive of love

It is the voice of Christ promulgating the New Testament, the new law which both absorbs and surpasses the old, and raises human endeavor to the very peak of perfection. The great motive of man’s activity is a sense of duty which controls the exercise of his freedom. In the Old Testament it was fear; and at all times including our own it is instinct and self-interest. But for Christ, who is the Father’s gift of love to the world, the motive is love. He taught us to obey through love; it is love that moved Him to set us free. According to the teaching of St. Augustine, “God gave less difficult precepts to those who had still to be bound by fear; through His Son He gave more difficult ones to those whom He had deigned to free by love.”

Christ in His Gospel has spelled out for the world the supreme purpose and the noblest force for action and hence for liberty and progress: love. No goal can surpass it, be superior to it, or supplant it. The only sound law of life is His Gospel. The human person reaches his highest level in Christ’s teaching. Human society finds therein its most genuine and powerful unifying force.

We believe, O Lord, in Thy word; we will try to follow and live it.

Echoes of the Beatitudes

Now we hear its echo reverberating in the souls of men of our century. It seems to tell us: Blessed are we, if in poverty of spirit we learn to free ourselves from false confidence in material things and to place our chief desires in spiritual and religious goods, treating the poor with respect and love as brothers and living images of Christ.

Blessed are we, if, having acquired the meekness of the strong, we learn to renounce the deadly power of hate and vengeance, and have the wisdom to exalt above the fear of armed force the generosity of forgiveness, alliance in freedom and work, and conquest through goodness and peace.

Blessed are we, if we do not make egoism the guiding criterion of our life, nor pleasure its purpose, but learn rather to discover in sobriety our strength, in pain a source of redemption, in sacrifice the very summit of greatness.

Blessed are we, if we prefer to be the oppressed rather than the oppressors, and constantly hunger for the progress of justice.

Blessed are we, if for the Kingdom of God in time and beyond time we learn to pardon and to persevere, to work and to serve, to suffer and to love.

We shall never be deceived.

In such accents do We seem to hear His voice today. Then, it was stronger, sweeter, and more awe-inspiring: it was divine. But as we try to recapture some echo of the Master’s words, we seem to be won over as His disciples and to be genuinely filled with new wisdom and fresh courage.   

December 30 • Feast of the Holy Family...Learning to Love, Pray and Live in the School of Nazareth

The Feast of the Holy Family is dedicated to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, commemorating their life together in Nazareth and calling us to focus on Catholic family life.

The feast is celebrated on the first Sunday after Christmas, unless Christmas falls on a Sunday, in which case it is celebrated on December 30. According to the Fisheaters website  this feast is placed where it is on the calendar because “in Old Testament Law, a child wasn't a son of Abraham or a true part of the family until his circumcision at 8 days of age, an event of Christ's life that we celebrated on 1 January (from 25 December to 1 January are 8 days).” The feast was placed on the general calendar of the Roman Rite on October 26, 1921, by the Congregation of Rites under Pope Benedict XV.

Catholic Online

The house of Nazareth is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to meditate, to penetrate the deepest meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God, drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Jesus spent 30 of his 33 earthly years in Nazareth. Some spiritual writers have called these the 'hidden years', because there is so little written about them in the Gospel narratives. However, they reveal the holiness of ordinary life and show us how it becomes extraordinary for those baptized into Christ. From antiquity the Christian family has rightly been called a domestic church. In our own Christian family we can learn the way of selfless love in the School of Nazareth.

During the Octave (eight days) of Christmas we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. The significance of the Feast unfolds when we come to understand the deeper truths it reveals. It teaches us about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph- and about each one of us and our own families. Through our Baptism, we are invited to live our lives in Christ by living them in the Church - which is the Risen Body of Christ. The Church is the place where we learn, as the Apostle Paul reminded the Colossian Christians, to "put on love, that is, the bond of perfection". (Coll. 3:14)

The Gospel of the Liturgy is taken from the presentation of Jesus in the temple account in St. Luke and the beautiful canticle of Zechariah. (Luke 2:22-40) However, upon leaving the temple to return to Nazareth, we read these words: When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions of the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him."  

In a beautiful address on December 28, 2011, at his Wednesday audience, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Here is a short excerpt: "The house of Nazareth is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to meditate, to penetrate the deepest meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God, drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

"The Holy Family is an icon of the domestic Church, which is called to pray together. The family is the first school of prayer where, from their infancy, children learn to perceive God thanks to the teaching and example of their parents. An authentically Christian education cannot neglect the experience of prayer. If we do not learn to pray in the family, it will be difficult to fill this gap later. I would, then, like to invite people to rediscover the beauty of praying together as a family, following the school of the Holy Family of Nazareth".

The Christian family is the first cell of the whole Church. It is the place where we begin the journey toward holiness and become more fully human. The Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, became one of us. He was born into a human family. That was neither accidental nor incidental. There, in what the late Pope Paul VI called the "School of Nazareth", we can learn the way of love. The late Pope's reflection called "The Example of Nazareth" is in the Office of Readings for the Liturgy of the Hours (the breviary) for the Feast of the Holy family.

Every moment of his time among us Jesus was saving the world, re-creating it from within. To use a word from the early Church Father and Bishop St. Ireneaus, he was "recapitulating" the entire human experience. There, in the holy habitation of Nazareth, He forever transformed family life. Now, He teaches us how to live in His presence, if we will enroll in the "School of Nazareth".

From antiquity the Christian family has rightly been called a "domestic church." In our life within the Christian family Jesus Christ is truly present. However, we need the eyes to see Him at work, the ears to hear His instruction and the hearts to make a place for Him to dwell. In our family we can learn the way of selfless love by enrolling in the School of Nazareth.

Jesus spent 30 of his 33 earthly years in Nazareth. Some spiritual writers have called these the "hidden years", because there is so little written about them in the Gospel narratives. However, they reveal the holiness of ordinary life and show us how it becomes extraordinary for those baptized into Christ.

Every moment of his time among us Jesus was saving, redeeming, and re-creating the world. From his conception, throughout His saving life, death and Resurrection, the One whom scripture calls the "New Adam" was making all things new. The Fathers of the last great Council of the Church put it this way:

"The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. .He Who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), is Himself the perfect man.

"To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin" (Gaudium et Spes # 22) ...

In the holy habitation of Nazareth Jesus transformed family life. Already blessed as God's plan for the whole human race and the first society, the Christian family has been elevated in Christ to a Sacrament, a vehicle of grace and sign of God's presence. The Church proclaims Christian marriage, and the family founded upon it, is a vocation, a response to the call of the Lord. In the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we learn the way of love in the School of Nazareth.

The phrase "domestic church" was one of particular fondness to the great Bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom. It was a framework for the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on Christian marriage and family. Blessed Pope John Paul II developed this teaching in his "Christian family in the Modern World" and his "Letter to the Family". In these writings he invites every Christian family to, using his pregnant phrase, "become what you are", a domestic church.

The Holy Family of Jesus, Joseph and Mary is not only our model, it is the beginning of the new family of the Church. Our Gospel story today tells us of a family trip which is packed with lessons for those enrolled in the School of Nazareth. In and through the ordinary stuff of daily life we find Jesus and in the encounter discover ourselves. Pope Paul VI wrote: "Nazareth is a kind of school where we may begin to discover what Christ's life was like and even to understand his Gospel. .Here we can learn to realize who Christ really is. . Here everything speaks to us, everything has meaning."

We live in Church. We were baptized into the Lord and now live in His Risen Body as members. The Church is a communion, a relationship in Christ. The Christian family is the smallest cell of that Body of Christ. The extended church community is a family of families. This understanding is more than piety--it is sound ecclesiology, solid anthropology...it is reality. Family life is where the "rubber hits the road" for most Christians. It is here where the universal call to holiness, in all its real, earthy, humanness and ordinariness, is first issued. It is here where we learn the way of discipleship.

Family is where progress in the spiritual life can find its raw material. Whether we choose to respond to grace - and develop the eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to accept the hidden invitations to learn to love beneath the surface of that daily "stuff" - is all wrapped up in the mystery of human freedom. Our choices not only affect the world around us, they make us become the people we will become.

St. Paul exhorted the early Christians to "Have this mind among yourselves which was in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself " (Phil. 2:5) The Greek word translated "emptied" in St. Paul's letter to the Philippians is "kenosis."

This word refers to the voluntary pouring out-like water-of oneself in an act of sacrificial love. This "emptying" is the proper response of the love of a Christian for the One who first loved us. It is also the very heart of the vocation of Christian marriage and family.

When the right choices are made in this life of "domestic kenosis", this life of domestic emptying lived in Christian family, we change. We are converted. We cooperate with the Lord's invitation to follow Him by exercising our human freedom; we choose to give ourselves away in love to the "other."

In this life of responding to the Lord's invitations we are gradually transformed into an image, a living icon, of Jesus Christ, as Pope Benedict XVI reminded the faithful. This way of holiness is not easy, as anyone who has lived the vocation can attest, but make no mistake; it is a very real path to holiness. It is also a wonderful one.

The challenge lies in the choices we make, daily, hourly, and even moment-by-moment. Two trees still grow in the garden of domestic life. They invite the exercise of our freedom, which is the core of the Image of God within us. There is the tree in Eden where the first Eve said, "No I will not serve." Then, there is the Tree on Calvary where Mary, the "second Eve" stood with the beloved disciple John and, along with him, again proclaimed her "yes".

Through those choices, presented to us from the moment we open our eyes every morning to the time we close them at night, we are invited to learn in the "School of Nazareth" and, in imitation of the Holy Family, become a domestic church. We are invited into a domestic kenosis, learning to love, pray and grow in holiness in the School of Nazareth

St. Paul wrote to the early Christians: "Brothers and sisters: Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection." (Col. 3)

The first school of prayer and practice, the place where we learn this new way of life, is the first cell of the Church, the domestic church of the Christian family.

Feast of the Holy Family

On Sunday is the second day of the blessed season of Christmas. This year, the day after Christmas Day is also the Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

This feast is celebrated on Sunday following the Lord’s Birth.

Very little information is given by the Bible about the family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. What we have are accounts pertaining to the Birth of Jesus up to his loss and finding in the temple. Although some non-canonical writings present to us some stories about Jesus’ childhood and their family life, we regard them as apocryphal.

The family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph was a “Holy Family.” God was at the center of their relationships and prayer was at the very heart of their family life.

While the main focus of Sunday’s celebration is the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it is also an opportune time for us to celebrate the Christian family. Our families too, must also be holy families. Let us pray for all Christian families, that in spite of all difficulties, they may still strive to live holy lives. Let us pray for one another that He may use our families to recreate a world where peace, justice, love, and truth reign. In the words of Pope John Paul II, “May the Holy Family, who had to overcome many painful trials, watch over all the families in the world, especially those who are experiencing difficult situations.

May the Holy Family also help men and women of culture and political leaders so that they may defend the institution of the family, based on marriage, and so that they may sustain the family as it confronts the grave challenges of the modern age!”