The Daily Gospel for Sunday, December 27, 2015

The Daily Gospel for Sunday, December 27, 2015

"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."[John 6:68]
The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - Feast - Year C
Feast of the Church: The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - Feast

The Holy Family
of
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
(Feast)

The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus — the school of the Gospel. First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us...
A lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character...
A lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the Carpenter's Son," in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work." — (Paul VI at Nazareth, January 5, 1964)
The Holy Family models for us what family life should exemplify. It is a school of virtue for both parents and children. There we find God, and learn how to connect with God and with others. The family is where love is freely given without self-interest. It is where we learn to love, to pray and to practice the gift of charity. 
Pope John Paul II has said, “The family, more than any other human reality, is the place in which the person is loved for himself and in which he learns to live the sincere gift of self”.

Father,
help us to live as the Holy Family,
united in respect and love.
Bring us to the joy and peace of your eternal home.
Amen.[www.catholicculture.org.]

Saints of the day: St. John, Apostle and Evangelist (Feast)

SAINT JOHN 
Apostle and Evangelist
(† c. 100)
Feast

St. John, the youngest of the apostles in age, was son of Zebedee. He was called to follow Christ on the banks of the Jordan during the first days of Our Lord's ministry. He was one of the privileged few present at the Transfiguration (with Peter and James) and the Agony in the garden.

At the Last Supper his head rested on the bosom of Jesus, and in the hours of the Passion, when others fled or denied their Master, St. John kept his place by the side of Jesus, and at the last stood by the cross with Mary. From the cross the dying Saviour bequeathed his Mother to the care of the faithful apostle, who "from that hour took her to his own;" thus fitly, as St. Austin says, "to a virgin was the Virgin intrusted."

After the Ascension, St. John lived first at Jerusalem, and then at Ephesus. He was thrown by Domitian into a caldron of boiling oil, and is thus reckoned a martyr, though miraculously preserved from hurt.

Afterwards he was banished to the isle of Patmos, where he received the heavenly visions described in tine Apocalypse. He is the author of the Fourth Gospel, the Apocalypse, and three Epistles.

He died at a great age, in peace, at Ephesus, about the year 100.[Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]]

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - Feast - Year C
The Book of Sirach 3: 2 The Lord gives pride of place

to a father above his children

and establishes a mother’s judgment

above that of her offspring.

3 Those who honor their fathers

will make up for their own sins,

4     and those who praise their mother

    are like people storing up treasure.

5 Those who honor their fathers

will be made happy

by their own children,

    and they will be heard when they pray.

6 Those who praise their fathers

will live a long life,

    and those who listen to the Lord

    will give rest to their mothers,[

Sirach 3:6 LXXb adds 3:7a Those who fear the Lord will honor their father.]

12 My child, help your father in his old age,

    and don’t give him grief during his life.

13 And if his understanding fails,

    be tolerant,

    and don’t shame him,

    because you have all your faculties.

14 Taking care of one’s father

won’t be forgotten.

    It will be credited to you

    against your sins.

Psalm 128:(0) A song of ascents:

(1) How happy is everyone who fears Adonai,

who lives by his ways.

2 You will eat what your hands have produced;

you will be happy and prosperous.

3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine

in the inner parts of your house.

Your children around the table will be

like shoots from an olive tree.

4 This is the kind of blessing that will fall

on him who fears Adonai.

5 May Adonai bless you from Tziyon!

May you see Yerushalayim prosper

all the days of your life,

The Letter to the Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with feelings of compassion and with kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with one another; if anyone has a complaint against someone else, forgive him. Indeed, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive.

14 Above all these, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together perfectly; 15 and let the shalom which comes from the Messiah be your heart’s decision-maker, for this is why you were called to be part of a single Body.

And be thankful — 16 let the Word of the Messiah, in all its richness, live in you, as you teach and counsel each other in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude to God in your hearts. 17 That is, everything you do or say, do in the name of the Lord Yeshua, giving thanks through him to God the Father.

18 Wives, subject yourselves to your husbands, as is appropriate in the Lord.

19 Husbands, love your wives and don’t treat them harshly.

20 Children, obey your parents in everything; for this pleases the Lord.

21 Fathers, don’t irritate your children and make them resentful, or they will become discouraged.

The Holy Gospel of Yeshua the Messiah according to Saint Luke 2:41 Every year Yeshua’s parents went to Yerushalayim for the festival of Pesach. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up for the festival, as custom required. 43 But after the festival was over, when his parents returned, Yeshua remained in Yerushalayim. They didn’t realize this; 44 supposing that he was somewhere in the caravan, they spent a whole day on the road before they began searching for him among their relatives and friends. 45 Failing to find him, they returned to Yerushalayim to look for him. 46 On the third day they found him — he was sitting in the Temple court among the rabbis, not only listening to them but questioning what they said; 47 and everyone who heard him was astonished at his insight and his responses. 48 When his parents saw him, they were shocked; and his mother said to him, “Son! Why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been terribly worried looking for you!” 49 He said to them, “Why did you have to look for me? Didn’t you know that I had to be concerning myself with my Father’s affairs?” 50 But they didn’t understand what he meant.

51 So he went with them to Natzeret and was obedient to them. But his mother stored up all these things in her heart.

52 And Yeshua grew both in wisdom and in stature, gaining favor both with other people and with God.
The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - Feast - Year C
Commentary of the day
Saint John-Paul II, Pope from 1978 to 2005
Christmas message, 25 December 1994 (Osservatore Romano) 
The Holy Family and our families My Christmas message this year is addressed especially to families. At the end of the year particularly dedicated to them, our thoughts return to the mystery of the Holy Family… Jesus prays to the heavenly Father that all may be one. This prayer came to his lips on the eve of his Passion, but from his birth he already bore it within him: “Father, grant that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11). Was he not also praying at that very moment for the unity of human families? True, he was praying in the first place for the unity of the Church; but, sustained by a particular sacrament, the family is a vital cell of the Church and even, according to the teaching of the Fathers, a little domestic Church. Jesus, therefore, prayed from his coming into the world that those who believe in him would express their communion from the profound unity of their families, a unity which, besides, was part of God’s design “from the beginning” (Matthew 19:4) with regard to the conjugal love at the family’s origin… He who made a “free gift of himself” when he came into the world prayed that all people, when they establish a family, should make a reciprocal and disinterested gift of themselves: husbands and wives, parents and children, and every generation of which the family is composed, each contributing its own proper gift. May the family, so closely united to the mystery we contemplate on the day of the Lord’s birth, guide all the families on earth with its example!... Son of God, come amongst us amidst the warmth of one family, grant that all families may grow in love and contribute to the wellbeing of all humanity… Teach them for this reason to renounce egoism, deceit, the unbridled desire for personal gain. Help them to develop the immense resources of heart and mind which grow greater when it is you who inspire them.

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