HOMILY FOR SOLEMN MASS FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH (YEAR A) AND CLOSE OF THE JUBILEE YEAR 2025
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 28 DECEMBER 2025
In Rembrandt’s painting of the Holy Family with Angels (1645), now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, we witness a thoroughly domestic scene.[1] The context is not in the Bethlehem stable but Joseph’s workshop, where the carpenter is bent over his bench, surrounded by his tools, and focused on shaping a yoke with his axe: perhaps it is the “easy yoke” of which his Son will one day speak (Mt 11:28-30). Mary sits on a low chair, her left foot on a foot-warmer, and leans over the cradle to adjust its curtain with one hand. In her other hand she holds open a book, perhaps reading the prophecies about her Son. The Baby lies asleep under a red, fur-lined coverlet. Above them, angels flutter down upon beams of heavenly light, suggesting God’s providence amidst this intensely human scene and pointing to Christ as “the Light of the world” (Jn 8:12 etc.).[2] Each actor is doing their bit: Joseph through his labour, Mary through nurture and prayer, the angels through keeping guard, the child “sleeping in heavenly peace.”
So much about Christmas is spectacular: there are angelic annunciations to Joseph, Mary and the shepherds; there’s a comet followed by Magi and their retinues; there’s talk of the emperor, governor and local king, their bureaucrats and soldiers; there’s heavenly music and gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. As angels sing the first Gloria in excelsis we see a splendid vision of God glorified and humanity at peace—supernatural hope for our broken world.
Yet Rembrandt’s picture suggests a much more familiar, intimate, even mundane kind of hope. The kind that sustains a family day by day: the hope that our work matters, that our children will grow up safe, that our love will endure, that God and His angels will be at hand when needed. In this sense family life can be a nursery of hope. It is where first we learn that there is more to the universe than ourselves, that we are not islands but parts of a greater whole, that there are people we can lean on who in turn rely on us, and that sacrifice for others is worthwhile. Family is also the first place where we can recognise ourselves and others as children of one heavenly Father and thus come to see all humanity as “made in God’s image,” our equals in dignity, worthy of our reverence and love.
When families are prey to hatred and violence, torn apart by death and grief, left traumatised and insecure as so many were this past fortnight by the Bondi terror attack, natural hope can be in short supply and supernatural hope seem empty. Yet it is precisely in such darkness that people of faith and love are called to hold fast to hope.
This time last year, at the opening of the 2025th Jubilee of Christ’s Birth, I spoke of the Holy Family experiencing a crisis in the original “Home Alone” story: teenaged Jesus was separated from His parents in Jerusalem yet found three days later in the Temple educating the doctors of the Law (Lk 2:41-52). All ended well, the child was safe, the family reunited, but only after Mary and Joseph had “been through hell”.
Today, as our Jubilee Year of Hope winds to its close, we hear of crisis for the Holy Family of a very different kind (Mt 2:13-15,19-23). This time Jesus is not lost: He is hunted. Mad, bad Herod, threatened by talk of a newborn king, orders the massacre of male infants in Bethlehem. An angel warns Joseph in a dream, and he flees with the family by night into Egypt. The chronology of the arrival of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Flight into Egypt and how long the Holy Family stayed there is unclear. But when the refugees return to their homeland there’s still enough tension in the air for Joseph to pick the nowheresville of Nazareth to raise his family. It was a town so insignificant that Nathanael would later ask, “Nazareth? Can anything significant come from Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46) and Pilate could write ironically “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews (Jn 19:19-22). This Holy Family of Nazareth would know displacement, fear, the difficulties of starting over.
We can easily sentimentalise the Christmas story: to highlight the loving parents, the choir of angels, supportive shepherds, gift-bearing magi; to sing carols to the giggling Babe that make us feel warm and fuzzy inside. All that is fair enough. But just beneath the surface the story is far from sentimental: there is fear of humiliation and punishment for pregnant Mary; confusion and disappointment for Joseph; sheer terror all round so that both parents and the shepherds have to be told repeatedly by angels not to be afraid. Next an unsympathetic state demands a longish journey for a census just as the baby fell due, and there is nowhere for them to stay. The Child is born in a stable amidst the squalor of animals and the mess of human life.
And then came the Flight into Egypt: despite the romantic artworks, no business class flight this, no Qantas Club, just more hardship and uncertainty.
If we should not sentimentalise the plight of the Holy Family, so too our own less holy families. Ben Sirach reminds family members to respect each other, be obedient and supportive, loving and kind (Sir 3:2-6,12-14), presumably because these natural duties do not come naturally to many people. Paul exhorts his Colossian families to be compassionate and kind, humble and gentle, patient and forbearing, merciful and grateful, presumably because he knew how hard this can be and perhaps he had witnessed less virtuous attitudes in some of his congregation (Col 3:12-21). We know that families can be the locus of so much that is noble in human life, of self-sacrifice, generosity, forgiveness, and endurance. They can be places where hard things like disappointment, conflict, illness, and grief are shared and healed. When they work, families are home to the best bits of human life: faith and love, intimacy and security, education and care. But it is hard work, requires intentionality not just romance, and cannot be taken for granted.
Throughout the past Jubilee Year, we have been asked to reflect deeply on Christian hope. Not wishful thinking or mere optimism, but the theological virtue that sustains us through life’s challenges as we journey toward God. What kind of hope have we discovered this year past? If we opened this Jubilee Year with a Holy Family in crisis over a lost boy and are closing it with the same Holy Family in crisis over a deadly danger, so we began with a terrible war in the Holy Land and end with that war coming to Sydney as anti-Semitic attacks. Like Joseph we must learn to hope against hope, placing our trust in God amidst our dreams and nightmares.
Trusting in God is no assurance everything will be easy: that was certainly not the Holy Family’s experience. Nor does it mean that if we pray hard enough, or believe more intensely, all obstacles will disappear from our path. Rather, it is the hope that in Jesus-Emmanuel (= God-with-us and for-us), we will be accompanied through our trials, see our way forward, and have the strength to advance. The hope that even when we cannot see the way forward, God sees it and will lead us there. The hope that love is stronger than death, that light overcomes darkness, that the story doesn’t end with the massacre or the exile. This is the hope we are called to carry beyond this Year of Hope…
May our Jubilee God of hope, who accompanied the Holy Family in their flight into Egypt and their return to Nazareth, accompany you and your loved ones through your trials and your relationships in the year ahead.
[1] Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, The Holy Family with Angels (1645), 117 x 91 cm, The Hermitage St Petersburg.
[2] Mt 2:2,10; Lk 1:78-79; 2:9, 32; Jn 1:7-9; 3:19-21; 8:12; 9:5; 12:35-36; 2Cor 4:6; 1Jn 1:6-7; Rev 22:5.
INTRODUCTION TO SOLEMN MASS FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH (YEAR A) AND CLOSE OF THE JUBILEE YEAR 2025
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 28 DECEMBER 2025
Welcome to St Mary’s Basilica Sydney for the Solemn Mass of the Feast of the Holy Family and close of the Jubilee Year of Hope, marking the 2025th anniversary of the Lord’s birthday and our salvation.
In his Bull of Indiction for Jubilee 2025, Pope Francis reminded us that hope is central to Christian life.[i] Much more than wishful thinking or optimistic temperament, biblical hope is a spiritual gift, enabling us to endure with faith and love when all else is stripped away, illuminating the intellect with God’s plans for us, and giving us confidence, patience, tranquility and joy amidst life’s challenges.[ii] As the Jubilee Year of Hope winds to its close today, we ask God to grace our city with hope amidst the gloom of the Bondi attack: the hope of eternal life for the dead; the hope of healing for the injured, grieving and traumatised; the hope of safety for the Jewish people, wisdom for our leaders, and repair for our whole community. In the post-Christmas quiet, we reflect on our need for hope, as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.
[i] Pope Francis, Spes non confundit: Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025 (2024).
[ii] Hope is a gift of the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:13), that endures with faith and love when all else is stripped away (1Cor 13:13; 2Cor 4:18; Heb 11:1), illuminating the mind with God’s plans for us (Jer 29:11), giving us confidence (Isa 40:31; Ps 62:5-6; Lam 3:21-23; Phil 1:6), patience (Mic 7:7; Rom 5:3-4; 8:24-25), peace of mind (Rom 15:13) and spiritual joy (Rom 15:13; Rev 21:4).