The Confraternity of the Holy Family .
HISTORICAL NOTICE .
It was in the town of Liège, in Belgium , that this pious association had its humble beginning. An officer of engineers and a few devout workmen were the instruments which God chose for this design .
On Whit- Monday 1844 they met together for the first time, in a room belonging to a poor carpenter. Their object was to join in prayer and pious reading, and encourage each other in the practice of Christian virtue. God blessed the pious association : their numbers rapidly increased ; the room soon became too small to contain them ; when the Redemptorist Fathers offered the use of their church for the weekly meetings. The Bishop of Liège, Mgr. Van Bommel, saw in the rising association the fulfilment of a project he had long been meditating for the good of his flock . Hetherefore joyfully encouraged it, and watched over it with a care and affection which never diminished up to the day of his death , in April 1852.
Not content with approving its rules, by a decree of the 7th of April 1845 , he wished to procure for it the sanction of Papal authority. Moved by his prayer, and the recital of the happy fruits which the association produced in Liège , where it numbered already nearly one thousand men , his Holiness Pius IX ., by two briefs, dated respectively the 20th and 23d of April 1847, approved the pious association , enriched it with many indulgences, and raised it to the dignity of an archconfraternity, with the power of affiliating to itself other confraternities of the same name and object, and communicating to them all its spiritual favours and indulgences.
As soon as the apostolic briefs were published , a number of devout women , eager to profit by the permission granted by his Holiness, resolved to form a similar association for persons of their own sex. They met with equal success ; and in Liège alone this branch of the Holy Family numbers already, it is believed , nearly a thousand members .
Under the protection of the zealous Bishop, the Holy Family rapidly spread from Liège to other towns of his diocese ; and it soon extended
to other parts of Belgium , to Holland , France , and even America. In Ireland and England similar confraternities have been erected for children , and have been so blessed by God, that in many places they number several hundreds of members regularly attending the weekly meetings ; while in some instances the number amounts to more than a thousand .
The success of these first attempts has encouraged the Superiors of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer to publish this translation of the Rules and Exercises of the Confraternity, for the use of the adults of both sexes. They have also caused a large medal of the
Holy Family, with an English inscription , to be struck , for the use of the Confraternity.
They now recommend this holy work to the zeal of the Clergy , and abandon the success of it into the hands of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph . In their name it was begun , and by their protection it must prosper.
St. Mary's, Clapham.
