Feast of the Holy Family Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

Flight Into Egypt - Autun

28th December 2025

I do find the first reading from Sirach rather lop sided. Of course it belongs to an age where lines of authority were clearly set and the patriarchal role far more dominant, but the language used starts with authority over others, and the call to revere your mother and honour your father does not seem to take into account a reciprocal sense of relationship being at least two way process between people. I grew up at the end of an age when children were to be seen and not heard on occasion, and where the psychology of little persons did not play as much in their overall formation as it does now. And I am glad we seem to have moved on in the understanding of our relationships with each other as more complex. We are not called to remain in a dependent, infantile stage of our growth, becoming an adult is also a process of change, opening out our personalities through the joys and woes of life, and it applies to our spiritual life as well.

So, what do you think about the Holy Family? I don't think they fit easily into any romantic image of family life, nor can we take them as a template for our own families. In fact the Holy Family challenges us to rethink things! If we enter into the deeper mystery of their relationship with each other, with their wider family and friendships which we glimpse in the scriptures, and also the tensions of the society in which they lived, then we discover a richer and more complicated picture in which the accent, so to speak, is about a profound understanding that beyond everything is their relationship with God, as it has to be for each one of us.

This is difficult to comprehend at times, but we do get glimpses of the presence of Christ our true God in many circumstances of our own existence. The birth of a new baby is often a moment of wonder that such a little being can come about, but as we watch and learn to understand that new little person we sense a wonder about their particularities of personality as they grow up. Then at the end of life, I often think of how we come into this world with nothing and leave it by letting go of everything except the hope, trust and love that the One beyond all things, who loves us , is calling us home. It is in these glimpses of the God who loves us that we realise the Holy Family is teaching us to expand the limits of our horizons . To understand that the families were are born into, are not the defining relationships in our faith life, but become a way into the family of God.

I'd like to end by thinking a bit about Joseph, a figure whose solid honesty and integrity comes out of the gospels. Todays gospel of this feast, taken from Matthew chapter 2, shows us , yet again, of the extraordinary burden Joseph had to shoulder. We have been made aware that he is a man of honour in his dealings with Mary his betrothed, particularly in the story of the angel coming to him in a dream and telling him that the child she was expecting is of God. By making Mary his wife and placing the child under his name and protection, Joseph shows love at it most generous and a courage able to challenge religious mores. Here in the flight onto Egypt we discover him again making momentous decisions based on his dreams, which I am sure were very much informed by what one could describe as a deep intuition and insight formed by character and faith. In this gospel the Holy Family not only ask of us a generosity towards our own family members, but to grow in that inner knowledge of the Lord who is always part of our family. Then as we see the plight of many refugees in our world, as well as those children who are orphans, the Holy Family ask of us the wisdom to be more inclusive, to remember that through our baptism we are all adopted into the one family of the living God !

Lectio
Colossians 3:12-17

Brothers and sisters:
Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved,
heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if one has a grievance against another;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.
And over all these put on love,
that is, the bond of perfection.
And let the peace of Christ control your hearts,
the peace into which you were also called in one body.
And be thankful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,
as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another,
singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
with gratitude in your hearts to God.
And whatever you do, in word or in deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Poem
The flight of the Holy Family
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

The shadows have been ready, falling
Through cool evening air.
And from the cleft comes Joseph, striding
Across the hush of meadow. There,
Ahead, the trees.
He points the donkey toward them
And feels a lightly fanning breeze.
It's from angels' wings-
The child sees them in his dream.
Mary, gazing down at him in love and pain, sings
Silent cradle songs. The quiet has no seam.
Crisscrossing glowworms light her way,
Eager to show each step and stay;
Sweet shudders bend the grasses-
They stroke her cloak's hem as she passes;
The brooklet ceases its chatter,
The forest whispers scatter
That they might not betray the flight.
The child raised his hand,
And for their kindness on this night,
He blessed the silent land,
So that the Earth, each flower and tree,
From then on to eternity
Must dream of Heaven each night.
O happy time and bright!