Family: Light for the Crisis of Today’s World
The Holy Family
“Blessed are those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways.”Ps. 128
The Holy Family is not a distant ideal or a romantic image; it is God’s answer to the confusion of our time. In a world where the family is relativized, redefined, or devalued, God shows us that His own Son wished to enter history through a real, concrete, and simple family. Nothing was accidental: Jesus was born into a home to teach us that the path toward Him passes through the family.
- A home where God is at the center. The first thing that shines in the Holy Family is that God holds first place. Mary lives in attentive listening, Joseph in obedience, and Jesus in self-giving.
Today, many family crises arise when God ceases to be the center and is replaced by ego, comfort, haste, or whims.
The Holy Family reminds us that there is no domestic peace without God; there is no stable future without the One who sustains everything. - Faithful love, not passing feelings. Mary and Joseph did not build their home on emotions, but on firm decisions.
They accepted difficult, incomprehensible, and even painful missions, and they remained faithful.
In a time when relationships become fragile and many abandon them at the first conflict, the Holy Family shows that authentic love knows how to persevere, dialogue, forgive, and rebuild. - Unity in the midst of trials. The Holy Family experienced: the poverty of the manger, Herod’s persecution, exile in Egypt, and the hidden and silent life of Nazareth. They were not a family “without problems,” but a family that, in the midst of problems, remained united in God.
Today most families suffer tensions, economic pressures, migration, insecurity. The teaching is clear: trials do not destroy the home when they are lived while holding on to God and staying united. - Authority as service. In Joseph we see the figure of the father who protects, provides, and guides—not with authoritarianism, but with a humble authority born of love.
In Mary shines the tenderness that educates, the patience that accompanies, the strength that sustains. In Jesus shines forth filial obedience. In a time of ideologies, moral confusion, and attacks against the family, the Holy Family appears as the torch that does not go out. We do not need to invent new models; we need to return to God’s plan.
Saint John the Apostle | December 27
Saint John was one of the Twelve, part of Jesus’ inner circle, among the few that witnessed the Transfiguration, the raising of Jarius’ Daughter, and the Agony in the garden at Gethsemane. He and his brother James were the sons of Zebedee and Salome. When Jesus called them, they left their father mending nets and followed him. Jesus called the brothers “Boanerges,” meaning “sons of thunder”—they were passionate in their faith and Jesus had to rebuke them for their fiery zeal on more than one occasion. John, the younger brother, possibly the youngest disciple, was the only one present at Jesus’ death.
Saint John the Apostle is traditionally thought to be the author of the fourth Gospel, the three Epistles of John, and the Book of Revelation. However, there has been some debate among scholars from antiquity to the present. Tradition also gives him the title Beloved Disciple and John’s Gospel sees him seated next to Jesus at the last supper and the one to whom Jesus gives the care of Mary at the crucifixion.
Although Church tradition says that John survived the other disciples, living a long life, much of it is steeped in myth and legend. Some say he retired to Ephesus after the crucifixion with Mary and remained there until he died. But in other traditions he is more active. For a time he remained in Jerusalem with the other disciples, then founded churches in Asia Minor. In a legend of his persecution, during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, John is taken to Rome and thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil but preserved from death. He is then exiled to the island of Patmos where the Book of Revelation was written.
Most accounts agree that after his exile and the Assumption of Mary he returned to Ephesus where he died sometime after 98, during the reign of the emperor Trajan.
Readings of the Week
Sunday: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14/Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5/Colossians 3:12-21 or 3:12-17/Mt 2:13-15, 19-23
Monday: 1 John 2:3-11/Psalm 96:1-2a, 2b-3, 5b-6/Luke 2:22-35
Tuesday: 1 John 2:12-17/Psalm 96:7-8a, 8b-9, 10/Luke 2:36-40
Wednesday: 1 John 2:18-21/Psalm 96:1-2, 11-12, 13/John 1:1-18
Thursday: Numbers 6:22-27/Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8/Galatians 4:4-7/Luke 2:16-21
Friday: 1 John 2:22-28/Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4/John 1:19-28
Saturday: 1 John 2:29–3:6/Psalm 98:1, 3cd-4, 5-6/John 1:29-34
Next Sunday: Isaiah 60:1-6/Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13/Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6/Matthew 2:1-12
Observances of the Week
Sunday: The Holy Family
Monday: Saint Thomas Becket, Bishop and Martyr
Wednesday: New Year’s Eve, Saint Sylvester I, Pope
Thursday: Mary, the Holy Mother of God
Friday: Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church
Saturday: The Most Holy Name of Jesus
Next Sunday: The Epiphany of the Lord
