Hearing The Word

A weekly newsletter delivering context and insight into the Sunday Gospels.

December 28, 2025

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

When the magi had departed, behold,

the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,

“Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt,

and stay there until I tell you.

Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.”

Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night

and departed for Egypt.

He stayed there until the death of Herod,

that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled,

Out of Egypt I called my son.

When Herod had died, behold,

the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream

to Joseph in Egypt and said,

“Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel,

for those who sought the child’s life are dead.”

He rose, took the child and his mother,

and went to the land of Israel.

But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea

in place of his father Herod,

he was afraid to go back there.

And because he had been warned in a dream,

he departed for the region of Galilee.

He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth,

so that what had been spoken through the prophets

might be fulfilled,

He shall be called a Nazorean.

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Emmanuel in Exile: Faith on the Flight into Egypt

~Rev. Thomas Whittingham

Pastor, Saint Laurence Catholic Church + Upper Darby, Pa.

The Gospel for Holy Family Sunday invites us to meditate not on idyllic domestic peace but on displacement, danger, and divine protection. These verses of Matthew thrust us into the harsh reality faced by the Holy Family. A reality that is as human as it is holy.

Joseph, having already accepted the astonishing role of foster-father to the Son of God, now receives another command in a dream: flee to Egypt. The urgency is unnerving for the parents of a small child. The life of the Christ Child is threatened by a tyrant’s fear. Herod, like Pharaoh before him, stands as the worldly power that cannot abide the promise of divine kingship. In a night, the Holy Family becomes a refugee family. The Incarnation plunges immediately into the brokenness of the human condition.

Matthew is deliberate in invoking Hosea: "Out of Egypt I called my son." Israel’s history is being recapitulated in Christ. Just as Israel wandered and was called out of slavery, so too Jesus willingly enters exile as part of God’s providential plan. The Holy Family lives out salvation history not in abstract, but in the vulnerability of actual migration, of foreign soil, of hiding and waiting. God is not above such things. He embraces them.

For preachers, this passage demands a bold proclamation of the mystery of divine providence. God speaks in dreams, moves in the margins, asks for immediate and urgent change from us, and protects his own not by removing danger but by guiding them through it. Joseph obeys in silence, but his obedience is courageous and active. He listens. He rises. He acts. This is not passive piety; rather it is manly virtue and fierce fatherhood. This is faith lived as a courageous response to trying circumstances far from ideal.

In reflecting on the Holy Family, we must not reduce them to sentimental images. They truly are the prototype of the Church: obedient, resilient, on the move. Their home is wherever God leads. They know what it is to be rejected, hunted, poor. And in their trials, God is not absent. He is Emmanuel.

This feast calls us to renew our trust that God is with us, even in our own flight into Egypt—whatever form that may take. Let our families, including our family the Church, imitate Joseph in obedience, Mary in trust, and Christ in faithful endurance.

Hearing the Voice of Angels

~Jeannette Williams

Our Lady of Sacred Heart + Hilltown Twp, Pa.

In our current culture, in which fatherhood and the family are under such attack, the Church provides us with a feast to remind us of God’s holy and perfect plan. All three of the readings today for the Feast of the Holy Family are beautiful demonstrations of God’s design for family life and how He guides us.

It’s not a popular statement nowadays, but God the Father has given the human father authority, because he is supposed to be an image of our Heavenly Father. By following the model of St. Joseph, fathers can lead their families in holiness and be witnesses to the world of God’s fatherly love for all of us.

In today’s Gospel reading, an angel speaks to Joseph three times in dreams to tell him what to do. We know of only one time that the angel spoke to Mary – at the very beginning, when she gave her perfect Fiat to the Lord and conceived the Son of God. After that, according to Scripture, all communications for the family went directly to Joseph.

Joseph’s first angelic vision, as we know, was to assure him that Mary’s story was true and to help him accept God’s call to be head of the Holy Family. This, you might say, was Joseph’s Fiat. Then the angel continued to guide Joseph in his duties to protect Jesus and Mary from the evils of their age. As a wife and mother, it is my duty to support my husband and follow his lead as Mary did, helping our children to do the same, because God has given him the vocation of family leadership.

I’m sure every father would love to have an angel telling him what to do to protect his family from today’s evils! But actually, we each have our own guardian angel who is always trying to speak to us. Fathers can cultivate devotion to their guardian angels and even to the angels of their wives and children. Theologians tell us that the more we call on our angels, the more we see their actions in our lives and hear their gentle promptings.



So, fathers, you are the St. Joseph for your family. You are the image of the Heavenly Father to the world. Turn to your angels to guide you, and you may find you get those clear answers you need, just like St. Joseph did.