No matter how deep the love, every human
being is essentially a mystery.
If the Holy Family did not always understand
one another, the mutual love and dependence was unshaken. [In this painting, Janet] McKenzie makes it beautifully
clear that here is a family unit, three individuals bound together. We notice that both Mary and Joseph look, not
at us or at each other, but at Jesus.
Highlighted by the glancing sunlight, Joseph’s body language makes it
unmistakably clear that he is devoted, body and soul, to the support of his beautiful
wife, resolute to share with her the extraordinary responsibility of raising
the child Jesus to manhood.
The silent awe that Joseph feels is that of
any young father faced with the wonder of raising a child. Mary’s immense dignity, her majestic
inwardness, is surely that of a young mother holding her gift from God. The closeness and the sense of unexpressed
devotion, which gives any family its stability, are here made visible. The artist wants us to see the Holy Family as
writing large for us the holiness of the family, any family, our family.
--Sister Wendy Beckett’s
Meditation on Janet McKenzie’s
The Holy
Family
To read Sister
Wendy Beckett’s complete analysis of this beautiful painting, click here.
Image &
quotation source: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2010/01/18/sister-wendy-beckett-meditates-janet-mckenzies-holy-family?fbclid=IwAR1PCt1-6NTwxSq9KHg6cG9oG5exyxXldvxhY8RnTaBh-diSpbLw93E3x7w’
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