(Giotto, Flight into Egypt, Lower Basilica of St. Francis, Assisi, circa 1310)

Sunday, 28 December 2025

SUNDAY OF THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS – YEAR A

Commentary on the Sunday Gospel

Mt 2:13-15, 19-23

After contemplating the beauty of the cave in Bethlehem, we now immerse ourselves in the drama and violence of the world. Just a few days ago, we were able to savour the meaning of God’s incarnation, and on this Sunday we find ourselves faced with a family that must confront human wickedness. And we learn how, by listening to God, we understand his judgement, which is a judgement of salvation. This passage closes the second chapter of Matthew, already beginning to speak to us of Jesus’ future mission.

The passage opens with this image: ‘The Magi had just left’, the situation has just changed, a new page has been turned. A departure that immediately evokes silence, a desert, a lack. First the celebration, now solitude, the intimacy of home. Human beings are inactive. In this inactivity, here is the angel of the Lord. Here is the dream, something uncontrollable for us, a passive dimension. The angel tells Joseph to act, to get up, to take “the child and his mother”, a woman who no longer has a name, but whose life is now only in relation to Christ. All their lives now exist in relation to him. Dream and get up.

‘In the night’ Joseph gets up and listens to the angel, he acts. The night of misunderstanding, of the unconscious, of dreams. The night that everyone experiences can be a place of action for us. We never hear Joseph speak in the entire Gospel, and therefore not even on this occasion. He acts and carries out God’s plan. We might have spoken first and then acted, but in Joseph, the key lies in his essence as a righteous man.

What was God’s plan? ‘So that what had been said by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: “Out of Egypt I called my son”‘, just as the people of Israel were first brought to Egypt because of Joseph being sold by his brothers and then came out of slavery in Egypt through Moses, in the same way a new Joseph leads Jesus to Egypt, the place from which he will be called for his mission. Egypt and its desert are an image of our conduct. This is the first ‘descent into hell’ experienced by Jesus; his mission will begin with his ascent from this abyss.

Today’s passage skips the dramatic image of the massacre of the innocents, born of Herod’s envy and fury. This passage is always relevant, as we all see the massacres of innocents and the fury of madmen before our eyes. We fill this gap in the narrative with images that are more or less familiar to us, experiencing them with intimate closeness and prayer for the victims.

Today’s story then continues with two more dreams of Joseph, the silent protagonist of the whole action: to get up and to stay. Two very different actions, which require wisdom and listening, each to be carried out at the right moment.

The first action, of movement: ‘Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel‘. Joseph is invited by the angel to return to the promised land. The exile seems to be over. This action, promptly carried out by Joseph, is followed by fear, a very human condition in the face of the madness of violence. God is not deaf to our fear, to our hearts beating in the face of war. And so, again in a dream, the invitation to the second action, one of prudence and pause: “he withdrew to the region of Galilee and went to live in a town called Nazareth.” Here begins the so-called “hidden life” of Jesus, that very long and untold part that illuminates all our “hidden lives,” made up of everyday life.

In Matthew’s Gospel, with a jump of one verse, thirty years of life are skipped, made up of alleys, friends, daily routine, words, learning, meals together, silences, work, prayer, tears and smiles. The life of Jesus is like the life of each one of us, a life that is built slowly, day after day. Knowing that the one who will save us all can come from this suburban town leaves us bewildered. The words of Nathanael to Philip seem to echo: ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’.

And yet, it is precisely in the suburbs that God chooses to spend most of his time, learning from us human beings to be human himself, learning to speak, to pray, to suffer, to love. And we should learn, like God, to give greater dignity to the peripheries, even the existential ones, to all those intimate places where the song and cry of creation can be heard most strongly, in the depths of everyday life. Every family, after all, is the cradle of this everyday intimacy, and the Holy Family of Nazareth can be an example for all of us to follow because of the dignity it gives to this intimacy. Dreaming and rising remain the images to follow in our lives.

As St. Clare of Assisi reminds us, ‘O blessed poverty, which procures eternal riches for those who love and embrace it! O holy poverty: to those who possess and desire it, God promises the kingdom of heaven and undoubtedly grants eternal glory and blessed life! O pious poverty, which the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose power were and are heaven and earth, who spoke and everything was created, deigned to embrace more than anyone else! For he said: Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man, that is, Christ, has nowhere to lay his head, but bowing his head, he gave up his spirit” (FF 2864)

Happy Sunday of the Holy Family

Laudato si’!