Feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth.
Memorial of the holy prophet David to whom some of the psalms are attributed. For centuries the psalms have nourished the prayer both of Jews and Christians. Memorial of Thomas Becket (+1170), defender of justice and of the dignity of the Church.
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Feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth.
Memorial of the holy prophet David to whom some of the psalms are attributed. For centuries the psalms have nourished the prayer both of Jews and Christians. Memorial of Thomas Becket (+1170), defender of justice and of the dignity of the Church.
First Reading
1 Samuel 1,20-22.24-28
Hannah conceived and, in due course, gave birth to a son, whom she named Samuel, 'since', she said, 'I asked Yahweh for him.' Elkanah, the husband, went up with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice to Yahweh and to fulfil his vow. However, Hannah did not go up, having said to her husband, 'Not before the child has been weaned. Then I shall bring him and present him before Yahweh and he will stay there for ever.' When she had weaned him, she took him up with her, as well as a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and took him into the temple of Yahweh at Shiloh; the child was very young. They sacrificed the bull and led the child to Eli. She said, 'If you please, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood beside you here, praying to Yahweh. This is the child for which I was praying, and Yahweh has granted me what I asked of him. Now I make him over to Yahweh for the whole of his life. He is made over to Yahweh.' They then worshipped Yahweh there.
Psalmody
Psalm 84
Antiphon
Return to us, O Lord, our salvation.
O Lord, you once favoured your land
and revived the fortunes of Jacob,
you forgave the guilt of your people
and covered all their sins.
You averted all your rage,
you calmed the heat of your anger.
Revive us now, God, our helper!
Put an end to your grievance against us.
Will you be angry with us for ever,
will your anger never cease?
Will you not restore again our life
that your people may rejoice in you?
Let us see, O Lord, your mercy
and give us your savings help.
I will hear what the Lord God has to say,
a voice that speaks of peace,
peace for his people and his friends
and those who turn to him in their hearts.
His help is near for those who fear him
and his glory will dwell in our land.
Mercy and faithfulness have met;
justice and peace have embraced.
Faithfulness shall spring from the earth
and justice look down from heaven.
The Lord will make us prosper
and our earth shall yield its fruit.
Justice shall march before him
and peace shall follow his steps.
Second Reading
1 John 3,1-2.21-24
You must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God's children -- which is what we are! The reason why the world does not acknowledge us is that it did not acknowledge him. My dear friends, we are already God's children, but what we shall be in the future has not yet been revealed. We are well aware that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is. My dear friends, if our own feelings do not condemn us, we can be fearless before God, and whatever we ask we shall receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what is acceptable to him. His commandment is this, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and that we should love one another as he commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments remains in God, and God in him. And this is the proof that he remains in us: the Spirit that he has given us.
Reading of the Gospel
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Glory to God in the highest
and peace on earth to the people he loves.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Luke 2,41-52
Every year his parents used to go to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up for the feast as usual. When the days of the feast were over and they set off home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parents knowing it. They assumed he was somewhere in the party, and it was only after a day's journey that they went to look for him among their relations and acquaintances. When they failed to find him they went back to Jerusalem looking for him everywhere. It happened that, three days later, they found him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions; and all those who heard him were astounded at his intelligence and his replies. They were overcome when they saw him, and his mother said to him, 'My child, why have you done this to us? See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you.' He replied, 'Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?' But they did not understand what he meant. He went down with them then and came to Nazareth and lived under their authority. His mother stored up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and with people.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Homily
They have been just very few days since Christmas and the Liturgy makes us meet again Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Not in Bethlehem but in Nazareth. Jesus' family seemed like an ordinary family, made of people who lived of the work of their hands. But the strength of that family is Jesus himself, that child for whom his parents live and toil. How much could moms learn from the Mary's attention for her son! How much dads could learn from the example of Joseph, a righteous man, who devoted his life support and defend not himself but the child and his mother!
The holiness of this family is totally in the centrality of Jesus. Jesus is the true treasure that Mary and Joseph had welcomed and took care attentively and watched him grow in their midst, or better, in their hearts--their love and understanding growing with him. This is why the family of Nazareth is holy: because it was centred on Jesus. The anguish they felt when they could not find the 12-year-old Jesus, should be our anguish when we feel far from him, when we forget the Gospel, when we distance ourselves from the poor. Mary and Joseph went out, left their caravan, a life made of habits sometimes without the Lord, went back and found him in the Temple among the teachers.
Jesus in the temple gives us an important lesson today: we are all children of God. He has been telling us since he was a child, since the first pages of the Gospel. And he repeats it to the end, from the height of the cross when he entrusts himself totally in the Father as a son and gives a son to his mother and his mother to the disciple. The apostle John reminds us of this in his first letter: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are." Today Jesus teaches us how we are or better as we should feel in front of God. The evangelist notes that Jesus of Nazareth, "increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour." We too must grow in the knowledge and love of Jesus. Nazareth--a village on the margins of Galilee and place the Holy Family's daily life--represents the entire life of the disciple, who welcomes, cares for and enables the Lord to grow in our hearts and lives. It is not only by chance that Nazareth means "the one that takes care of." Nazareth is Mary, who "treasured all these things in heart." Nazareth is the fatherland and the calling of every disciple. Even if the world continues to say: "Can anything good come from Nazareth"?
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
