When the magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, so that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” . . . When Herod had died, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” He rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there. And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee. He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazorean.” (Matthew 2.13-15, 19-23)
Nestled among three major solemnities–Christmas on December 25th, Mary, the Mother of God on January 1st, and Epiphany on January 6th–is the feast day dedicated to the Holy Family of Nazareth that is held each year on the first Sunday after Christmas. Established for the universal church in 1921 by Benedict XV and celebrated on the Sunday after Epiphany, the event was moved to the Sunday after Christmas by the Second Vatican Council, led by Paul VI.
Already at the time of its becoming an official celebration on the liturgical calendar, there were several places where such a day was already being observed as early as the 17th century. The practice reflected the increased devotion to the Holy Family that had developed with the years that highlighted Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as the model for Christian families everywhere.
Finding ourselves today on this special feast, we certainly want to agree that the Holy Family of Nazareth can continue to serve as a worthy model for imitation for family life even in our own times when the nature and the meaning of family have experienced change and adaptation. Whatever the nuance or shape of our own particular family, all of us can find much to admire and to imitate in Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Having said that, we also want to look more closely at the selection from the scriptures that has been given to us to consider on this special day, mining it for additional meaning and direction for our lives as we ponder the significance of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Our text, as we have seen, is found in the so-called infancy narrative of Matthew’s gospel that is contained in the first two chapters of his work.
The evangelist places this particular text after the familiar story of the visit of the Magi. Hence, the introductory phrase that reads, “When the magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.”
As we have seen in an earlier passage, Matthew prefers the vehicle of dreams to convey divine communication, four instances of an angel coming to Joseph in a dream seen in this infancy narrative, three of which are located in this flight to Egypt saga alone. It is a standard method already found in the Hebrew scriptures, the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph receiving dreams as well as the prophet Daniel, to name but a few recipients of this mode of divine communication.
Here, it is fair to ask about the historical accuracy of this flight to Egypt, particularly since Matthew’s fellow gospel writer Luke makes no mention of it. It is but one of many differences found in the presentation of Jesus’ birth by these two writers. Another point to note at the start is that Matthew apparently has Joseph and Mary already living in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth whereas Luke has them living in Nazareth and traveling to Bethlehem for the nativity. As we see today, Matthew will get the holy family to Nazareth eventually, but it is by a round-about route necessitated because of the machinations of wicked Herod who wants to kill the newborn king of the Jews.
Obviously, both cannot be true without some very skillful playing with the two texts, our having to force an agreement where none is intended. Again, it is better and wiser to approach the story from the viewpoint of purpose rather than history, especially since there is no extra-historical record of Herod having wrought a massacre of young boys, although Herod certainly had a reputation for paranoia and for persecution. Even Caesar was reputed to have said of him, “It is better to be one of Herod’s pigs than one of his sons,” apparently a reference to Herod’s murdering his own sons because of his superstition of their plotting for his throne. Some scholars would suggest this is the origin of the story.
So, we are on safer ground when we ask for what theological purpose does Matthew provide his community with this story of the massacre of the innocents. The answer is found later in the gospel when we come to see that Matthew is intent on presenting Jesus as a Moses-like figure. If we place the biblical story of Moses as found in the Book of Exodus atop this story of the massacre as provided by Matthew we will find clear parallels, including Moses’s being saved from the massacre of all the Hebrew baby boys in Egypt when his sister hides him in the Nile River.
That effort at parallelism will continue throughout the gospel. So, as Jesus begins his public ministry, he gives his sermon on the mount, another parallel to Moses who ascended a mountain and returned with a teaching from the Most High God for the Hebrew people. But we may wonder why Moses. That answer is provided when we recall that Matthew himself was a Jew and he is writing for Christian believers who also had religious roots in Judaism.
For Jews, Moses was considered the greatest of the prophets. Or, as the writers of the Book of Deuteronomy stated the case, “Since then no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, in all the signs and wonders the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh and all his servants and against all his land, and all the great might and the awesome power that Moses displayed in the sight of all Israel.”
Utilizing the figure of Moses, then, made great sense when Matthew wanted to address a Jewish audience with his story about Jesus of Nazareth. Placing Jesus as a Moses-like figure not only brought familiarity to the audience, but also authority. It clearly was intentional on Matthew’s part and his infancy narrative is but the first of many parallels that the evangelist provided between Moses and Jesus.
Having said that, it is also interesting to see that this part of Matthew’s infancy narrative is all about place. His first chapter, as we may remember, was all about the identity of Jesus, the evangelist wanting to emphasize that Jesus was “the son of David” because of Joseph’s lineage. But here in Chapter 2, it is all about location or physical places.
Hence, we find the holy family hastily leaving Bethlehem for Egypt, becoming refugees escaping a tyrant back home. When it was certain that Herod no longer was a threat, the holy family left Egypt to go back home. In many ways, this parallels the story of the Hebrews slaves who left Egypt to return to their homeland with Moses serving as their leader across the desert.
But, as we see from the text, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did not return to their home in Bethlehem, the town of David about five miles outside Jerusalem, but instead moved to Galilee, making their home instead in a small village called Nazareth on the northern border of Palestine. In this way, Matthew is able to account for Jesus being known in his lifetime as Jesus of Nazareth and as a Galilean.
But there may be more here than simply a well-known fact about Jesus. Stepping back, we see much more at play than just a geographical place. For his part, Matthew may want us to see this movement of the holy family from Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth as part of the divine plan, each move to a new place prompted by an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream, directing him to “rise and take the child and his mother and go.”
Put plainly, it is God who is orchestrating the moves much the same as a chess player does with his pieces on the chess board. This becomes important for the early Christian communities even as it does for believers who would live in later ages. The theological truth at play here is that God puts us where he wants us. That belief has profound implications for how we see our lives and how we view our place in the world.
If we trust that there is divine purpose in where we find ourselves rather than believing where we land is no more than the haphazard and hazardous roll of the dice, then we ascribe importance to where we find ourselves, assuming it must serve the greater purpose of God’s plan. In this way, we find meaning in whatever place we are, understanding ourselves as being in the right place because it is the place where God wants us to be.
With that understanding, we do all the good we can wherever we find ourselves, seeing ourselves as workers in the Lord’s vineyard even if there isn’t a grapevine in sight. We become agents of change in every place we stand, content to stay in place until an angel in the night directs us to rise and to go elsewhere. Rather than becoming wanderers in search of God, we become settlers able to find God in the place where we are.
Mother Teresa, as always, understood this truth better than most. When she found herself with many people knocking on her door wanting to join her in serving the poor in the streets of Calcutta, she is said to have told them to go home, asking them, “Don’t you have poor people at home?” On another occasion, she said rather forcefully, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” Apparently she also understood that we do not have to go in search of God. The Lord is standing in front of us right now in the face of the poor, the hungry, and the lost wherever we are.
Pope Leo is another person who understands the same truth. In his recent Christmas eve sermon, he said, “To find the Savior, one must not gaze upward, but look below.” In other words, the Savior is not far away, but very near, living in the same zip code as us. If we want to serve him, then we do it in the place where God has put us.
The pope made the same point in a much more personal way. After his election in May, his older brother John visited him in Rome in October. As John tells the story, while he was there, the Pope gave him a gift certificate, saying to him, “Here’s a gift certificate I can’t use.” Then he also handed John the key that he had given him to his house so that his younger brother could go inside if he was ever in town on one of his trips and John was away. In returning the house key, the pope simply said, “Here’s this.” He said nothing more. Nothing more needed to be said. He was where God wanted him.
–Jeremy Myers
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