About Today
Sunday 28 December 2025
The Holy Family
Let us adore Christ, the Son of God, who made himself obedient to Mary and to Joseph.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: White.
In other years: The Holy Innocents, Martyrs
The Holy Innocents are the children who were slaughtered at the orders of King Herod, in the hope that by killing every boy born in Bethlehem at the same time as Jesus, he would succeed in killing the new-born King of the Jews.
There was nothing about those baby boys that made them deserve death. Look at any one of them, and you can see that he had no chance to do anything, or be anyone, or become anyone. He had done nothing. He had done nothing bad, he had done nothing good. He was born, and then he died, and that was all there was to him. So passive are these babies that some people find it hard to understand how they can share the title of “martyr” with people like St Stephen (the day before yesterday), who insisted on preaching the truth until his hearers stoned him for it, or St Thomas Becket (tomorrow), who insisted on living the truth until his king had him killed because of it. These children did not insist on anything except their mothers’ milk; and unlike Stephen and Thomas, there was no voluntary act of theirs that we can see as making the difference between being martyred and not being martyred.
So in our rational human terms these children are a puzzle, and that is one reason why God has inspired the Church to celebrate this very feast – to show us how inadequate our seemingly rational, worldly-wise thoughts are. As he reminds us again and again throughout salvation history, his thoughts are not our thoughts. Babies may not rank high on the scale as far as our human calculus is concerned; but then neither do sparrows, and yet God has told us that God sees and counts every one of those.
The Holy Innocents can stand, therefore, for the “unimportant” and “unnecessary” pawns, child and adult alike, that permeate the whole of human history, the ones who can be sacrificed for some greater cause because they “don’t really matter”; the eggs that were broken to make an omelette... or even broken to make nothing at all. There are plenty of them, one way or another. The feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us that in God’s eyes (that is, according to the true value of things), no-one is unimportant, no-one is unnecessary, no-one “doesn’t really matter.” However meaningless their lives and deaths may seem to us, they shine glorious in heaven.
On a more personal level, the honour given to the Holy Innocents reminds us that if we suffer or even die for God’s sake, it has value even if we have little or no say in it ourselves. Honouring them effectively honours also the martyrdom of the people these children could have become, and their children’s children as well; and at the same time we can remember the contemporary and continuing massacre of those who die before birth for the convenience of those who have them killed.
Feast of the Holy Family
Gospel: Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
When the Magi had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.
Reflection on the painting
Matthew is the only Gospel writer who tells us about the dreams of Joseph. Mark and John do not include infancy narratives, and Luke focuses almost entirely on Mary’s experience. Only Matthew places Joseph at the centre of the early story and reveals how God guided him through a series of four dreams. These dreams are essential to Matthew’s theology: Joseph is portrayed as a man who listens deeply, discerns faithfully, and acts immediately. Each dream safeguards the unfolding of salvation history, protecting Mary and little Jesus.
Our Gospel reading recounts two of Joseph’s four dreams, both connected to the Flight into Egypt. In the first part of our reading (2:13–15), an angel appears to Joseph at night with an urgent command: “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt.” Herod seeks to destroy the newborn Messiah, and Joseph must act without delay. Their journey fulfils the prophecy Hosea 11:1: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
After Herod’s death, Joseph receives a second dream, the second part of our reading (2:19–23), instructing him to return to Israel. Yet when he learns that Archelaus, Herod’s violent son, reigns in Judea, Joseph receives a fourth dream, warning him to avoid that region. He withdraws instead to Galilee, settling in Nazareth, fulfilling yet another scriptural foretelling.
In our striking painting of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, we are invited into a moment of quiet vulnerability. Joseph dozes beside a dying campfire, exhausted, while the donkey nibbles at sparse desert grass. Jospeh and the donkey in our painting remind us of the harshness of their journey and the fragile beginnings of the Incarnation. On the left, Mary and the infant Jesus rest peacefully in the protective paws of a great sphinx, the ancient Egyptian symbol of a civilisation long fallen. Its gaze lifts toward the first appearing stars, as if acknowledging a power greater than all earthly empires. The sphinx becomes a potent metaphor: the newborn Christ, cradled against this relic of pagan glory, will bring low every empire built on pride, violence, or self-sufficiency. Pagan kingdoms have risen and fallen; secular powers still rise and fall. And in our own age, we see secularism lifting its head once more, confident in its strength. Yet this painting quietly proclaims the eternal truth: it is not worldly power that endures, but the gentle, hidden, world-changing presence of the Holy Family.
Rest on the Flight into Egypt,
Painting by Luc Olivier Merson (1846–1920),
Painted in 1879,
Oil on canvas
© Museum of Fine arts, Boston
The Holy Family
Let us adore Christ, the Son of God, who made himself obedient to Mary and to Joseph.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: White.
In other years: The Holy Innocents, Martyrs
The Holy Innocents are the children who were slaughtered at the orders of King Herod, in the hope that by killing every boy born in Bethlehem at the same time as Jesus, he would succeed in killing the new-born King of the Jews.
There was nothing about those baby boys that made them deserve death. Look at any one of them, and you can see that he had no chance to do anything, or be anyone, or become anyone. He had done nothing. He had done nothing bad, he had done nothing good. He was born, and then he died, and that was all there was to him. So passive are these babies that some people find it hard to understand how they can share the title of “martyr” with people like St Stephen (the day before yesterday), who insisted on preaching the truth until his hearers stoned him for it, or St Thomas Becket (tomorrow), who insisted on living the truth until his king had him killed because of it. These children did not insist on anything except their mothers’ milk; and unlike Stephen and Thomas, there was no voluntary act of theirs that we can see as making the difference between being martyred and not being martyred.
So in our rational human terms these children are a puzzle, and that is one reason why God has inspired the Church to celebrate this very feast – to show us how inadequate our seemingly rational, worldly-wise thoughts are. As he reminds us again and again throughout salvation history, his thoughts are not our thoughts. Babies may not rank high on the scale as far as our human calculus is concerned; but then neither do sparrows, and yet God has told us that God sees and counts every one of those.
The Holy Innocents can stand, therefore, for the “unimportant” and “unnecessary” pawns, child and adult alike, that permeate the whole of human history, the ones who can be sacrificed for some greater cause because they “don’t really matter”; the eggs that were broken to make an omelette... or even broken to make nothing at all. There are plenty of them, one way or another. The feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us that in God’s eyes (that is, according to the true value of things), no-one is unimportant, no-one is unnecessary, no-one “doesn’t really matter.” However meaningless their lives and deaths may seem to us, they shine glorious in heaven.
On a more personal level, the honour given to the Holy Innocents reminds us that if we suffer or even die for God’s sake, it has value even if we have little or no say in it ourselves. Honouring them effectively honours also the martyrdom of the people these children could have become, and their children’s children as well; and at the same time we can remember the contemporary and continuing massacre of those who die before birth for the convenience of those who have them killed.
Feast of the Holy Family
Gospel: Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
When the Magi had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.
Reflection on the painting
Matthew is the only Gospel writer who tells us about the dreams of Joseph. Mark and John do not include infancy narratives, and Luke focuses almost entirely on Mary’s experience. Only Matthew places Joseph at the centre of the early story and reveals how God guided him through a series of four dreams. These dreams are essential to Matthew’s theology: Joseph is portrayed as a man who listens deeply, discerns faithfully, and acts immediately. Each dream safeguards the unfolding of salvation history, protecting Mary and little Jesus.
Our Gospel reading recounts two of Joseph’s four dreams, both connected to the Flight into Egypt. In the first part of our reading (2:13–15), an angel appears to Joseph at night with an urgent command: “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt.” Herod seeks to destroy the newborn Messiah, and Joseph must act without delay. Their journey fulfils the prophecy Hosea 11:1: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
After Herod’s death, Joseph receives a second dream, the second part of our reading (2:19–23), instructing him to return to Israel. Yet when he learns that Archelaus, Herod’s violent son, reigns in Judea, Joseph receives a fourth dream, warning him to avoid that region. He withdraws instead to Galilee, settling in Nazareth, fulfilling yet another scriptural foretelling.
In our striking painting of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, we are invited into a moment of quiet vulnerability. Joseph dozes beside a dying campfire, exhausted, while the donkey nibbles at sparse desert grass. Jospeh and the donkey in our painting remind us of the harshness of their journey and the fragile beginnings of the Incarnation. On the left, Mary and the infant Jesus rest peacefully in the protective paws of a great sphinx, the ancient Egyptian symbol of a civilisation long fallen. Its gaze lifts toward the first appearing stars, as if acknowledging a power greater than all earthly empires. The sphinx becomes a potent metaphor: the newborn Christ, cradled against this relic of pagan glory, will bring low every empire built on pride, violence, or self-sufficiency. Pagan kingdoms have risen and fallen; secular powers still rise and fall. And in our own age, we see secularism lifting its head once more, confident in its strength. Yet this painting quietly proclaims the eternal truth: it is not worldly power that endures, but the gentle, hidden, world-changing presence of the Holy Family.
Rest on the Flight into Egypt,
Painting by Luc Olivier Merson (1846–1920),
Painted in 1879,
Oil on canvas
© Museum of Fine arts, Boston