Flee to Egypt: Sir 3, Col 3 and the Holy Family in Flight in Mt 2.

Surge, et accipe puerum et matrem eius, et fuge in Aegyptum.
Mt 2:13

The Feast of the Holy Family, on the Sunday within the octave of Christmas in Year A, brings together three texts centered on the family as a school of virtue and a place of obedience to God. Sir 3:2-6, 12-14 proclaims the obligation to honor father and mother and the benefits that flow from it: expiation of sins, spiritual riches, long life. Col 3:12-21 exhorts the faithful to clothe themselves with mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, holding charity as the bond of perfection, and applies these virtues to family relationships: wives, husbands, children, parents. Mt 2:13-15, 19-23 narrates the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt and the return to Nazareth after the death of Herod. The three texts describe the family as a place of obedience, of shared virtue, and of fidelity to God even in situations of danger and exile.

I. The First Reading: Sir 3:2-6, 12-14

Sirach gives a theological foundation to the fourth commandment: “The Lord honored the father above the children and confirmed the right of the mother over her children” (Sir 3:2). Whoever respects his father atones for sins (v. 3), and whoever honors his mother lays up spiritual treasure (v. 4). Whoever respects his father will have joy in his own children, and when he prays he will be heard (v. 5). Whoever honors his father will live a longer life (v. 6). And the application to old age: do not forsake your father in his old age, do not grieve him during his life (v. 12). Mercy toward a father is not forgotten, and in difficult days it will be remembered; it will serve as expiation for your sins (v. 14). Sir 3 does not idealize the family: it acknowledges that parents grow old, lose their clarity of mind, become a burden. And it is precisely at that moment that the commandment is most demanding and most meritorious. The Holy Family of Nazareth fulfilled this spirit: Mary honored God as Father, Jesus honored Mary and Joseph, and obedience within the family was the setting in which the Son of God grew in wisdom, stature, and grace (Lk 2:52).

II. The Second Reading: Col 3:12-21

Paul exhorts the Colossians as “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved”: to clothe themselves with heartfelt mercy, with kindness, with humility, with meekness, with patience (Col 3:12). To bear with one another and forgive one another as the Lord has forgiven you (v. 13). And above all these things, charity, which is the bond of perfection (v. 14). Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts (v. 15). And let the words of Christ dwell in you abundantly (v. 16). And then the family relationships: let wives be subject to their husbands as is fitting in the Lord (v. 18). Let husbands love their wives and not treat them harshly (v. 19). Let children obey their parents in everything (v. 20). Let parents not provoke their children, so that they may not become discouraged (v. 21). The Christian family is described not as a hierarchy of power but as a place of shared virtues in which each relationship has a specific quality required of it: love, obedience, patience, non-provocation. The implicit model is the Holy Family of Nazareth.

III. Evangelium: Mt 2:13-15, 19-23

After the visit of the Magi, the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream: “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child in order to destroy him” (Mt 2:13). Joseph rose by night, took the child and His mother, and departed for Egypt (v. 14). Joseph’s obedience is immediate and total. Matthew sees the fulfillment of a prophecy: “Out of Egypt I called my son” (v. 15, citing Hos 11:1). The Holy Family retraces the journey of Israel: the people who came out of Egypt in the Exodus are prefigured by the family that returns from Egypt after Herod dies. The angel appears again to Joseph in a dream (v. 19) and tells him that he may return, because those who sought the child’s life are dead (v. 20). Joseph takes the child and His mother and goes to the land of Israel (v. 21). But, fearing Archelaus, he goes to Galilee and settles in Nazareth (vv. 22-23). The life of the Holy Family is shaped by obedience: Joseph obeys the dreams, which are the voice of God. The exile is not a failure of God’s plan: it is part of it.

IV. Mary and the Family of the Flight

Mary is the central figure of the Holy Family not because she commands or decides, but because she carries. In the flight into Egypt, she takes the Son who is the Son of God and flees by night to a foreign country. The experience is that of all refugees: urgency, danger, helplessness, the uncertainty of the future. Mary, who sang the Magnificat at the Visitation, also knows the silence of exile. Col 3 asks the faithful to clothe themselves with mercy, kindness, humility, and patience: Mary is the perfect model of these virtues in family life. She does not appear in the Gospels arguing with Joseph, questioning decisions, imposing her own view. She appears welcoming, keeping, pondering. “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19): her family virtue is the contemplative recollection that makes it possible to listen to what God asks. Sir 3 speaks of honoring parents in old age and in weakness: Mary lived the reverse, for it was she who was cared for by her Son, who became her support in the years of widowhood and who, before dying, entrusted her to the beloved disciple. The Holy Family of Nazareth is the first Church: three persons united by the charity that Col 3 describes, a model of every Christian family.