The Institute for Christian Formation
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Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This is the second major feast of the Christmas Season. The Feast of the Holy Family is celebrated on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas (December 25-January 1), except in years like this one when both December 25 and January 1 fall on a Sunday. Then the Feast of the Holy Family is celebrated on December 30.
The readings proclaimed on the Feast of the Holy Family this year, Lectionary Cycle A, can be accessed here. You will note that there are options for our First Reading today. Our Gospel today is Matthew 2:13-
If you live with family or in community, spend quality time together on this Feast of the Holy Family. In today’s society, it is not unusual for people to live under the same roof, and rarely see each other or communicate. Families have been observed sitting in the same room, yet each family member is in their own technological world of texting, surfing the internet, glued to a television, listening to their ipod with earphones, or playing a solitary video
Whatever your lifestyle – single, married, parent, grandparent, widow or widower – always strive to live an authentic life, with Christ at the center. However you define your family or network, this is the task of a Christian each day of the year, not just on the Feast of the Holy Family. We are each called to live a holy life, whatever our circumstances. And each family, however it is configured, is called to be a holy family!
Those who are engaged or married will find the “For Your Marriage” web site of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to be a good resource. There is an English language site, and a Spanish language site. You can also download a good article about "The Christian Family and the Evangelization of Children" here.
game. Why not put a ban on this type of technology for today? Plan a nice meal, and prepare it together. Set your table using the good tableware, and sit down together for a leisurely dinner.
After dinner, go Christmas Caroling in your neighborhood as a family. (You can download the scores to some Christmas Carols below.) Do you have relatives close by who are living alone? Invite them to join you. Are there single people in your neighborhood? What about elderly people who have no relatives close by? Invite them, as well. Or if they can’t get out to go caroling, make sure to stop by their homes to serenade them with a carol or two! Expand your family circle to be inclusive of those who cannot share this feast with their own family.
Christmas Carols to Download (Just click on the title to download the score.)
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After caroling, invite all the carolers to come back to your home for hot chocolate and cookies. You could even serve panettone, the traditional Italian Christmas bread. You can buy this in many stores at Christmastime, or you can bake it yourself. Here is one recipe, and here is one place you could purchase bakeable paper panettone pans. (You could even bake some miniature panettones to drop off at homes where you are caroling.) If you do make/serve panetonne, gather the children around and read them the story of “Tony’s Bread” by Tomie dePaola, which is a legend about panettone!
Flight into Egypt
Vittore Carpaccio, 1500
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA
The University of Dayton Mary Page has a wonderful section on the Flight to Egypt. For more information, an excellent book is “The Holy Family in Egypt” by Otto F.A. Meinardus, The American University in Cairo Press 1986.
Antiochian Orthodox Department of Christian Education has lesson plans for young children through teens for this Gospel. Please note that these are written from the perspective of the Orthodox Church, and they also include Matthew 16-18,
Suggestions for Celebrating the Feast of the Holy Family
15,19-23. This Gospel gives both the account of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt to escape the murderous rampage of King Herod in his attempt to kill the baby Jesus, as well as the return of the Holy Family from Egypt.
verses about the Massacre of the Holy Innocents, which are omitted from our Gospel today (but which we heard proclaimed December 28 on the Feast of the Holy Innocents). Nonetheless, these lesson plans include some wonderful reflection questions for children, as well as beautiful icons and icon coloring pages of the Flight into Egypt.
Below you can listen to the first movement from Respighi’s “Church Windows (1/4) Four Symphonic Impressions”, "La fuga in egitto" ("The Flight into Egypt"), portraying the escape of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus from King Herod. The piece is performed here by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, led by Jesus Lopez-Cobos.
