27 December 2026 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malabar Rite · Latin Rite · മലയാളം
“Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” Luke 2:51
Two days after Yaldo the Church turns to the hidden life of the Holy Family. Matthew tells how Joseph, warned in a dream, brought the Child and his mother back from Egypt and “made his home in a town called Nazareth”. Luke shows the family going up each year to Jerusalem for the Passover. The Son of God grows up in an ordinary family, in an ordinary village, keeping the ordinary feasts of his people.
At twelve, Jesus stays behind in the Temple. After three days of anxious searching his parents find him “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” Mary says, “Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Jesus answers: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” His first recorded words reveal who his true Father is.
And yet, the Gospel says, “he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” The eternal Son obeys a carpenter and a village woman. Hebrews says Christ is “faithful over God's house as a son, and we are his house”. The family of Nazareth is the school where the Son of God learned to be human: to work, to pray, to obey and to grow “in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor”.
Zechariah's vision of Jerusalem is a picture of a blessed family and city: “Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets… and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing.” Families where the old are honoured and children are safe and joyful are signs of God's kingdom. Today we also remember the infants killed by Herod: the Church has always honoured them as martyrs, and with them we pray for every threatened child.
Theme: “The Holy Family: a home where God grows.”
After Christmas the Church looks at the home where Jesus grew up. The Son of God chose to live thirty years in an ordinary family at Nazareth. Our families can become holy in the same ordinary ways.
“I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD!”” Psalm 122:1
“He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?”” Luke 2:49
Apply: Come to the Holy Qurbono as a whole family, on time, every Sunday.
“Hear, my child, your father's instruction, and do not reject your mother's teaching.” Proverbs 1:8
“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: Children: obey your parents with a cheerful heart this week. Parents: spend unhurried time with your children.
“I will bring them to live in Jerusalem. They shall be my people and I will be their God, in faithfulness and in righteousness.” Zechariah 8:8
“Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead.” Matthew 2:20
Apply: Pray together for families in crisis: separated, sick, in debt or abroad.
Nazareth teaches us silence, work and love. Holiness grows at the family table, in prayer together and in daily obedience.
May Jesus, Mary and Joseph make our homes little Nazareths.
Take-home resolution: Begin or renew evening family prayer, and consecrate your family to the Holy Family.
Dear brothers and sisters, two days after Yaldo, the Church takes us into the house at Nazareth. The Son of God did not grow up in a palace. He lived in a small village, in a carpenter's home, with Mary and Joseph, keeping the feasts of his people.
Every year they went up to Jerusalem for the Passover. When Jesus was twelve, he stayed behind in the Temple. Parents here know the fear Mary and Joseph felt: three days of searching! When they found him, Jesus said: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” These are his first words in the Gospel. He knew who his true Father was.
And yet the next verse says: “he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” The Lord of heaven obeyed a carpenter and a village mother. For about thirty years he lived a hidden life of work, prayer and obedience. Holiness does not begin in great deeds; it begins at home.
Today we also remember the little children killed by Herod. Let us pray for every child in danger: the unborn, children who suffer violence, children of war and hunger. And let us make our homes little Nazareths: with daily family prayer, respect for elders, and joy for children. Amen.
Children, when Jesus was twelve, he went with Mary and Joseph to the big Temple in Jerusalem. On the way home, they couldn't find him! They searched for three days.
They found Jesus in the Temple, listening and asking questions. He said: “This is my Father's house!” Then he went home and obeyed Mary and Joseph.
Jesus obeyed his parents. Can you do that too? Let's say: “Like Jesus, I will love and obey!”
Lord Jesus, you grew up in the home of Mary and Joseph at Nazareth, obedient to them and busy with your Father's affairs. Bless our families: make our homes places of prayer, work and love, protect every child, and honour every elder. Amen.
Two days after Yaldo the Church looks at what happened after the shepherds went home: a child growing up in a family. The evening Gospel brings the Holy Family back from Egypt to Nazareth (Matthew 2:19–23). The Old Testament lessons are about children and growth: Isaac, weaned and celebrated, while Hagar and Ishmael are sent away with bread and water and a promise from God (Genesis 21:8–14); the boy Samson, who “grew, and the Lord blessed him” (Judges 13:24–14:4); and Zechariah's picture of a restored Jerusalem, with old people sitting in the streets and “boys and girls playing” (Zechariah 8:3–12). The Catholic Epistle asks the young to accept the authority of the elders and all to “clothe yourselves with humility” (1 Peter 5:5).
The three readings studied here share one word: house. Psalm 122 is the song of pilgrims going up to the house of the Lord. Hebrews says that Christ is faithful over God's house as a son, and that “we are his house”. In Luke the twelve-year-old Jesus is found in the Temple and speaks of his Father for the first time, and then goes down to the small house at Nazareth and obeys. The key words of this Sunday are house, son and growing.
Setting.
Of the Old Testament lessons, this psalm stands closest to the Gospel, because it is the song of the very journey Luke describes. Psalms 120–134 each carry the heading “A Song of Ascents”. Most scholars take them as songs linked with going up to Jerusalem for the great feasts. The Law asked Israelite men to appear before the Lord three times a year, at Passover, Weeks and Booths (Exodus 23:14–17; Deuteronomy 16:16), and those who could made the journey with family and neighbours.
The heading of this psalm also says “Of David”. David made Jerusalem his capital and brought the ark there (2 Samuel 6), but the Temple was built only by his son. The psalm speaks of the house of the Lord as already standing, so many scholars date it later and read the heading as a dedication to David. In the Greek and Latin Bibles this psalm is numbered 121.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”” (122:1)
Going to worship is not a private plan. Someone says “let us go”, and the psalmist is glad to be asked. A family or a parish does this for its members.
“Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.” (122:2)
After the long road, the pilgrim simply stands and takes it in. The tired feet are part of the prayer.
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:” (122:6)
The pilgrim is told to pray for the place, and not only to receive from it. Jews, Christians and Muslims all hold Jerusalem dear, and the verse still has its plain meaning today.
“For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.” (122:9)
Love of God's house turns into care for the people around it. Worship that ends in seeking the good of others is what the prophets asked for.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that the Psalms, “prayed and fulfilled in Christ”, are an essential and permanent element of the Church's prayer (CCC 2586). It also says that our visible churches are images of the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem, toward which we are on pilgrimage (CCC 1198). The New Testament speaks of “the Jerusalem above” (Galatians 4:26) and “the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22). St Augustine, preaching on this psalm, tells his people that they climb to that city by love, while their feet are still on earth (in substance, Expositions on the Psalms, his Psalm 121).
Setting.
Hebrews calls itself “a word of exhortation” (13:22). It is a sermon to Christians who were growing tired, some of whom were perhaps tempted to drift away. Chapter 2 has just called Jesus “a merciful and faithful high priest” (2:17). Now the preacher takes up the word “faithful” and compares Jesus with Moses, the greatest figure in Israel's memory.
The comparison rests on one verse. In Numbers 12:7, when Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses, God says of him, “He is entrusted with all my house.” The Greek Old Testament uses the word “faithful” here. Hebrews does not run Moses down. It honours him with the Bible's own words, and then shows a greater honour still.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“consider that Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession,” (3:1)
“Consider” here means to fix the mind on something and study it closely. The cure this preacher offers for tired faith is not a new programme, but a long look at Jesus.
“Yet Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.” (3:3)
“Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that would be spoken later.” (3:5)
Moses' faithfulness is real and it points forward. The Law and the promises were preparing what was to be spoken in the Son (1:1–2).
“Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.” (3:6)
A note on the text: many manuscripts add “firm to the end” after “hope”, and the Malayalam POC has “to the end”. Some of the oldest, including Codex Vaticanus, do not have it here, and the NRSV follows them; the same words stand in v. 14. The meaning does not change. On this Sunday the verse joins Nazareth to us: the Son who obeyed in Joseph's house now has a house of his own, and we are it.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism names Christ as the “high priest and unique mediator” who has made of the Church a kingdom of priests (CCC 1546), and lists “the house of God in which his family dwells” among the names of the Church (CCC 756). It also takes up the word parrēsia for the simple, trusting boldness with which the Church dares to call God “Father” (CCC 2778). In the Holy Qurbono, Christ the priest stands in the midst of his household, and those who gather around him are the house.
Setting.
Luke gives us the only story in the four Gospels from the years between the infancy of Jesus and his baptism. It closes his two chapters on the birth of John and Jesus. These chapters begin in the Temple with Zechariah and end there too. Simeon has just told Mary that a sword will pierce her own soul (2:35); here she has a first taste of that pain.
Passover was one of the three pilgrim feasts, and with the feast of Unleavened Bread it lasted about a week. Nazareth is several days' walk from Jerusalem. People travelled in groups for safety and company, which explains how a boy could be missing for a whole day without alarm. Later Jewish custom held a boy to be bound by the commandments at about thirteen. Age twelve fits a boy coming close to that step, although the bar mitzvah ceremony as we know it is much later.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” (2:46)
Luke does not show a child lecturing his elders. He listens and asks, and the teachers are the ones amazed (v. 47). Here is a Jewish boy in the house of God among the teachers of his people, at home.
“Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” (2:48)
Mary calls Joseph “your father”, for so he was in law and in love. The next verse sets another Father beside this one.
“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (2:49)
Jesus' first recorded words in Luke speak of his Father, and his last words on the Cross do the same (23:46). The question is not a rebuke. It tells who he is.
“But they did not understand what he said to them.” (2:50)
Mary is full of grace, yet she has to walk by faith. Luke is honest about this, and it comforts every parent who has not understood a child, and every believer who has not understood God.
“Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” (2:51)
The one who has just spoken of his Father goes home and obeys a carpenter and a village mother. This is the longest part of his life on earth, and the Gospels tell almost nothing of it. Luke notes twice that Mary kept these things (2:19, 51). She is the first to keep and ponder the mystery of her Son.
“And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” (2:52)
Compare the boy Samuel, who “continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people” (1 Samuel 2:26), and the boy Samson in today's lesson.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism takes this story as the revelation of Jesus' total consecration to the mission that flows from his divine sonship; Mary and Joseph do not understand, but accept in faith, and Mary keeps all these things in her heart through the years of his hidden life (CCC 534). It calls Nazareth a school, in the words of St Paul VI (CCC 533), and sees in the daily obedience of Jesus to his parents the restoration of what Adam's disobedience destroyed (CCC 532). The Second Vatican Council includes this episode in its teaching on Mary (Lumen Gentium 57), and St John Paul II speaks of Mary's pilgrimage of faith in those hidden years (Redemptoris Mater 17). St Ambrose sees in the three days a sign of the three days before the Resurrection (in substance, Exposition of the Gospel of Luke).
If Jesus is God, how could he grow in wisdom?
The Son of God took a true human soul, and with it true human knowledge, which by its nature develops in time and experience. So he could truly “increase in wisdom” (CCC 472). The Church also teaches that this human knowledge, through its union with the divine Word, expressed the divine life of his person, and that he knew what he had come to reveal (CCC 473–474). One person, true God and true man: he does not pretend to grow.
Was Jesus disobedient or unkind to his parents?
Luke does not present it so. In the next breath he says that Jesus “was obedient to them”. He does not excuse Mary's pain or blame her for asking. The story shows that his Father's claim comes first, and that this first claim is what makes him a true son at home. Every family that gives a child to God's service knows something of this.
Today's lectionary lists Hebrews as an Epistle of St Paul. Did Paul write it?
The letter does not name its author, and its Greek style differs from Paul's. Many in the early Eastern Churches held it to be Paul's, or to come from his circle. Origen, as Eusebius reports, said that God alone knows who wrote it down (in substance). The Church has always received it as inspired Scripture and read it with Paul's letters, as the Malankara lectionary does. Its authority does not depend on settling the question.
Yaldo means birth in Syriac, and the Sundays after it stay with the Child. The Syriac tradition is especially fond of wonder at this mystery: St Ephrem, in his Hymns on the Nativity, has Mary marvel at the Child she carries and adores (in substance). For the Malankara family this Sunday has a plain message. The road from Nazareth to Jerusalem and back is the road from home to church and back. When a family comes together to the Holy Qurbono and goes home to obey, serve and pray, it walks the way the Holy Family walked, and the Catechism calls such a home a domestic Church (CCC 1655–1657, 2204). Mary's way of keeping things in her heart is also a good rule for mothers, fathers and grandparents who hand on the faith through many small, unrecorded years.