27 December 2026 · Latin Rite
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“The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” Luke 2:40
On the Sunday after Christmas the Church looks at the home in which the Son of God chose to grow up. He did not come as an adult from nowhere; he came as a child into a family, with a mother, a foster father, a village, relatives and the Law of Moses. The Second Vatican Council calls the family “the domestic church” (Lumen Gentium 11), and the Holy Family of Nazareth is its model.
This year's readings put faith at the centre of family life. Abraham, childless and old, is told to look at the stars: “So shall your descendants be.” And “he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Sarah conceives Isaac at the time God had promised. Hebrews praises their faith: Abraham set out “not knowing where he was going”, and later offered Isaac, trusting that God could raise the dead. A family is built not first on money or plans but on trust in God's promise.
In the Gospel, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple to present him to the Lord, as the Law prescribed for the firstborn (Exodus 13:2), offering the gift of the poor, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons”. Simeon takes the child in his arms and blesses God; he also tells Mary that her son will be “a sign that will be opposed” and that “a sword will pierce your own soul too”. Even the Holy Family was not spared sorrow. Then they return to Nazareth, where “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom”. The hidden years at Nazareth sanctify ordinary family life: work, prayer, obedience and love (CCC 531–533).
Theme: “The child grew and became strong.”
A family of faith, a child presented to the Lord, and the hidden holiness of Nazareth.
“He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Genesis 15:5–6
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” Hebrews 11:8
Apply: Begin or renew daily family prayer.
“Consecrate to me all the firstborn; whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine.” Exodus 13:2
“Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”” Luke 2:34–35
Apply: Offer your children to God in prayer today.
“Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:6–7
“Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” Luke 2:51–52
Apply: Read a Gospel passage together at home this week.
God chose a family; families find God at home.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, make our homes like yours.
Take-home resolution: Consecrate your family to the Holy Family this week.
Dear brothers and sisters, two days ago we knelt before the manger. Today the Church asks us to look around the manger: at Mary, at Joseph, at the family into which God chose to be born.
God could have come in any way he wished. He chose to come as a baby, into a family. He needed a mother to feed him, a father to protect him and teach him a trade, and a home where he could grow. That tells us how much God values the family.
Today's first reading shows Abraham and Sarah, old and childless. God tells Abraham to count the stars: so many will be your descendants. And Abraham believed. A family is not built first on property, jobs or plans, but on faith in God.
In the Gospel, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple. They are poor; they can only offer two small birds. Simeon takes the child in his arms and praises God, but also tells Mary that a sword will pierce her heart. Even the Holy Family knew sorrow, fear and uncertainty. If your family is going through hard times, you are not far from Nazareth.
Then the Gospel says simply: they went home to Nazareth, and the child grew, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him. Thirty quiet years of work, prayer and ordinary love. That is where holiness grows for most of us: at the kitchen table, at work, in patience with each other.
So let us bring our families to the Lord today. Let us pray together at home, forgive each other quickly, respect our elders and bless our children. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, make our homes like yours.
St Joseph never speaks a single word in the Gospels, yet he protects the Holy Family at every danger.
📖 Genesis 37:5–11
📖 Matthew 1:18–25
Apply: Spend five minutes in silence with God each day.
📖 Genesis 50:20–21
📖 Matthew 2:13–23
Apply: Fathers: bless your children tonight.
📖 Micah 6:8
📖 Matthew 1:19
Apply: Correct with gentleness, never with humiliation.
Joseph shows how to guard a family: with silence, obedience, work and tenderness.
Every family can ask St Joseph to be its protector.
Take-home resolution: Our family will consecrate itself to the protection of St Joseph this week.
Dear brothers and sisters, on this feast of the Holy Family let us look at the one member who never says a word in the Gospels: St Joseph. Mary speaks, Jesus speaks, angels speak, but Joseph only listens and acts.
Four times an angel speaks to Joseph in a dream, and four times he obeys at once: to take Mary as his wife, to flee to Egypt, to return to the land of Israel, and to settle in Nazareth (Matthew 1:20; 2:13, 19, 22). Each time the Gospel says simply that Joseph got up and did as he was told. In a world full of noise, Joseph teaches us to listen to God in silence and to act without delay.
Joseph was a protector. When Herod sought to kill the child, Joseph took the child and his mother by night and fled to Egypt (Matthew 2:14). Think of that journey: a refugee family, poor, in a foreign land, with a little baby. Joseph worked with his hands to feed them. Today many fathers work far from home, in the Gulf or abroad, to support their families. Joseph understands them.
The Gospel calls Joseph a just man (Matthew 1:19). When he discovered that Mary was with child, he did not want to expose her to public disgrace. His justice was full of mercy. In our families too, justice and tenderness must go together: correction without humiliation, firmness without harshness, forgiveness without weakness.
Fathers, look at Joseph: protect your families, work honestly, pray, bless your children. Mothers, look at Mary. Children, look at Jesus, who was obedient to His parents. And let every family here entrust itself to St Joseph, guardian of the Redeemer. May he who guarded the Holy Family guard ours too.
The Church calls the family a domestic church. What does that mean in practice?
📖 Deuteronomy 6:4–9
📖 Acts 16:31–34
Apply: Begin or renew daily family prayer.
📖 Sirach 3:1–14
📖 Colossians 3:18–21
Apply: Visit or call an elderly relative this week.
📖 Psalm 128
📖 Matthew 2:13–15
Apply: Eat at least one meal a day together without phones.
The family is where faith is first received, prayed and lived.
Nazareth is a school for every family.
Take-home resolution: Our family will pray together every evening and share one meal a day without phones.
Dear brothers and sisters, the Second Vatican Council gave the Christian family a beautiful name: the domestic church (Lumen Gentium 11). On the feast of the Holy Family, let us see what this means in practice.
A church is a place where God is worshipped, His Word is heard and love is lived. The home is meant to be exactly that. Parents are the first heralds of the faith for their children (CCC 1656). Long before catechism class, children learn from their parents how to make the sign of the cross, how to fold their hands, how to forgive. Moses told the Israelites to speak of God's words at home and on the road, when lying down and when rising (Deuteronomy 6:7).
The Fourth Commandment teaches children to honour their father and mother, with respect, gratitude, obedience while they are young, and care for them when they are old (CCC 2214–2220; Sirach 3:1–14). It also gives parents duties: to educate their children in faith, in prayer and in virtue, to respect their vocation, and to give the example of a good life (CCC 2221–2226). St Paul writes: fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart (Colossians 3:21).
Families today are under great pressure: work far from home, financial stress, screens that keep everyone apart in the same room, addiction, broken marriages. The Holy Family also knew danger, poverty and exile. They survived because God was at the centre. Let our families do the same: pray together every evening, even briefly; eat at least one meal a day together without phones; come to the Holy Mass together on Sunday; forgive before sleeping.
And let the parish be a family of families, supporting those who are struggling, single parents, widows, the elderly living alone. May Jesus, Mary and Joseph bless every family in this parish, and make our homes true domestic churches.
Children, Jesus had a family too: Mary his mother and Joseph his foster father.
He helped Joseph in the carpenter's shop and helped Mary at home.
He obeyed them and grew big and strong and wise.
How can you help at home this week? Maybe tidy your room, or help set the table, with a smile!
O God, who were pleased to give us the shining example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practising the virtues of family life and in the bonds of charity, and so, in the joy of your house, delight one day in eternal rewards. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
On the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas the Church looks at the home in which the Son of God grew up. In Year B the Lectionary offers these readings, and they begin long before Nazareth, with an old couple who have no child. Abraham and Sarah receive a son only as God's gift. Hebrews shows that Abraham's faith went further: he was ready to give that son back. The psalm sings of the God who remembers his covenant. In Luke, Mary and Joseph carry their child to the Temple, offer him to the Lord, and take him home to grow up. The key words are promise, offering and growing. In each of these households the child is first of all God's gift, not the parents' possession.
Setting.
God had promised Abram a land, a great name and many descendants when he called him out of Haran (Genesis 12:1–4). Years have passed. “After these things” (15:1) points back to chapter 14, where Abram has rescued his nephew Lot from the kings and been blessed by Melchizedek. Outwardly he is a man of success, but the promise on which he left everything has not begun: he has no child.
The reading then jumps over six chapters. It leaves out the covenant ceremony of 15:7–21, the story of Hagar and Ishmael, the covenant of circumcision and the visit at Mamre, and goes straight to the birth of Isaac.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” (15:1)
This is the first time in the Bible that God says “Do not be afraid”. It is said to a man who is weary of waiting, before he has said a word.
“O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless” (15:2)
Faith here is not silence. Abram tells God exactly what hurts. Many couples who long for a child, and many who have lost one, can pray with this verse.
“Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” (15:5)
God brings Abram outside. Abram has been counting what he lacks, and God tells him to count something that cannot be counted.
“And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” (15:6)
One of the great verses of the Bible. St Paul builds on it in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, and James 2:23 quotes it too.
“Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him.” (21:2)
Abraham is a hundred years old (21:5). The stress falls on God's fidelity: “as he had said”, “as he had promised”, “at the time of which God had spoken”.
How the Church reads it.
St Paul reads Genesis 15:6 as proof that God's people are made righteous through faith, and calls Abraham the father of all who believe (Romans 4:11). The Catechism says that Abraham fulfils the definition of faith given in Hebrews 11:1 (CCC 146) and adds that God's promise of descendants is “the fruit of faith and of the power of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 706). The Second Vatican Council teaches that the beginnings of the Church's faith and election are already found among the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets (Nostra Aetate 4). The Church is not ashamed of these roots; she gives thanks for them. In the Roman Canon the Mass itself names “the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith”.
Setting.
Psalm 105 is a long hymn that tells Israel's history as the story of God's faithfulness: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph in Egypt, Moses and the Exodus, and the gift of the land. Its first verses (vv. 1–15) appear again in 1 Chronicles 16:8–22, where they are sung when David brings the ark to Jerusalem. Today's verses take only the opening call to praise and the statement of the covenant with Abraham.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples.” (105:1)
Even in the Old Testament, the story of Israel is meant to be told to the nations. Simeon will sing of the same horizon in today's Gospel.
“Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually.” (105:4)
Literally “seek his face always”. To seek God is the work of a whole life, never something finished.
“He is mindful of his covenant forever, of the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,” (105:8)
A thousand generations is the Bible's way of saying without end. Compare Deuteronomy 7:9.
How the Church reads it.
Zechariah and Mary sing in the same key at the beginning of Luke's Gospel. God has remembered “his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham” (Luke 1:72–73), and Mary too ends her song with Abraham (Luke 1:54–55). St Augustine, in his work On the Trinity, returns to the words “seek his face always” as a motto for the whole search for God (in substance). On this feast the psalm tells parents that they hand on a memory: the deeds of God, told from one generation to the next.
Setting.
Hebrews is a sermon to tired Christians, probably of Jewish background; its author is not named. Chapter 11 opens with a definition: “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1). A long roll of witnesses follows, from Abel to the martyrs, each introduced by the same words “by faith”. Abraham has more space than anyone. The reading selects three moments: his call, the birth of a son, and the test on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” (11:8)
Abraham knew who was calling him, even though he did not know the destination. Faith does not need the whole map.
“because he considered him faithful who had promised.” (11:11)
A note on the text. The Greek of this verse is difficult, and translators differ on who is the subject. The NRSV makes Abraham the one who received power to beget; the Malayalam POC, like many older versions, makes Sarah the one who received power to conceive. Either way, the ground of faith is the same: the one who promised is faithful.
“He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead” (11:19)
Here is the most striking comment on Genesis 22. Abraham could not see how the promise would survive, but he trusted that God could raise the dead. This is faith at its fullest.
“figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” (11:19)
The Church has always seen here an image of Christ's death and resurrection.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism presents Abraham's sacrifice as the last stage in the purification of his faith, and says that the father of believers is thus made like the Father who will not spare his own Son (CCC 2572; compare CCC 145–147). St Irenaeus teaches that Abraham, in his faith, readily gave up his only and beloved son so that God might also give his own Son for us (in substance, Against Heresies 4.5). For parents the passage is demanding and consoling: to hand a child over to God is the highest act of faith, and God does not take what is given to him in order to destroy it.
Setting.
Forty days after the birth of a son, a Jewish mother came to the Temple for the rite of purification. She brought a lamb and a bird, or two birds if she could not afford a lamb (Leviticus 12:2–8). Separately, every firstborn son belonged to the Lord (Exodus 13:2, 12) and was bought back with a payment (Numbers 18:16).
Luke weaves these customs into one scene. He speaks of “their” purification, and he says nothing of a payment. He shows the child being given to God, as Hannah gave Samuel at the sanctuary (1 Samuel 1:24–28). Five times in this passage Luke mentions the law (2:22, 23, 24, 27, 39). The family of Jesus is a devout Jewish family, living by the Torah. The shorter form of the Gospel keeps only the arrival and the return to Nazareth.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord” (2:22)
Malachi 3:1 had said that the Lord would suddenly come to his Temple. He comes, carried in his parents' arms, and hardly anyone notices.
“a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” (2:24)
This is the offering of those who could not afford a lamb (Leviticus 12:8). The Son of God grew up in a family of modest means. St Paul's words fit: “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
“Simeon took him in his arms and praised God” (2:28)
Mary and Joseph let a stranger take their child in his arms. A family that holds its child with open hands lets others meet him.
“a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (2:35)
Mary does not stand outside the drama of her Son. The pain of a mother is included in his mission.
“The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” (2:40)
Luke says almost the same of John the Baptist (1:80) and of the boy Samuel (1 Samuel 2:21, 26). The eternal Son truly grows, day by day, in a home at Nazareth, among his relatives and neighbours.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism sees in this scene the firstborn Son who belongs to the Lord, and says that Simeon's sword announces Christ's perfect oblation on the cross (CCC 529). Vatican II says that the union of the Mother with her Son in the work of salvation appears here (Lumen Gentium 57). On Nazareth, the Catechism teaches that the hidden life lets every person meet Jesus in the most ordinary events of daily life (CCC 533), and it quotes St Paul VI's address at Nazareth on the lessons of silence, family life and work. Christ chose to be born and grow up in a family, and so the Christian home is called the domestic church (CCC 1655–1657; Lumen Gentium 11). St John Chrysostom told his people to make the home a little church (in substance, Homilies on Ephesians 20).
Why are there different readings for this feast?
The Lectionary gives Sirach 3 and Colossians 3 as readings that may be used in every year, and it also offers proper readings for Years A, B and C. Today's are those of Year B. A parish that hears Sirach and Colossians is keeping the same feast.
Mary was without sin. Why did she need purification?
Purification in Leviticus 12 concerns ritual purity after childbirth, not moral guilt. Mary and Joseph keep the law as faithful Jews, and her Son himself was “born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Their obedience is an act of devotion, not an admission of sin.
Luke calls Joseph the child's father. Does that deny the virgin birth?
No. Luke has already told of the virginal conception (1:34–35). Joseph was truly the head of the household and the father who cared for Jesus, gave him his name and his place in the house of David. St John Paul II reflects on this fatherhood in Redemptoris Custos.
Was the Holy Family perfect, so that my family cannot compare?
They were holy, but their life was not easy. They knew poverty, a birth away from home, and a word about a sword. Pope Francis points to this real family in Amoris Laetitia 65–66. Their holiness lay in trust and in love, and every family can learn these.
The devotion to the Holy Family grew in the nineteenth century. Pope Leo XIII promoted it, and Pope Benedict XV extended the feast to the whole Latin Church in 1921. The Roman calendar of 1969 placed it on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, so that the mystery of the home at Nazareth is kept in the light of the crib. Because 27 December is a Sunday this year, the feast of St John the Apostle gives way to it. The Presentation itself has its own feast on 2 February, when candles are blessed. St Sophronius of Jerusalem preached on that day that all should run to meet Christ with lights in their hands (in substance). The whole Mass of today is an invitation for each family to bring its children, and its worries, to the altar.