Holy Family Sunday December 30, 2007

Reading 1, Sirach 3:2-6,12-14  The book of Sirach is named for the author “Jesus, son of Eleazar, son of Sirach”, a teacher from Jerusalem around 200 B.C. His grandson translated the work into Greek and added a foreword. The first 43 chapters deal largely with moral instruction and were so commonly used in the early Christian Church that Latin manuscripts entitled the book “Liber Ecclesiasticus”  (Book of the Church). Until 1898 no Hebrew copies of Sirach had been found. Since then about two thirds of the Hebrew text has been recovered from manuscripts dating back before the Christian era. Sirach is one of seven O.T. books from the Greek Septuagint not found in the more limited Hebrew canon of the the 1st century A.D.

Reading II, Colossians 3:12-21  Most men put on underwear, shirt, pants, socks, and shoes every day. In similar fashion, Paul suggests we dress ourselves every day with virtues. In particular, the well-dressed Christian will put on love. This comes within the context of how Christians should live as members of one body in the church community. He then carries the discussion to how members of the domestic church, the family, should work together. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, probably written and sent at the same time as that to the Colossians, also uses the image of getting dressed (although from the perspective of a soldier ready for conflict, Eph. 6:11-17) and an encouragement for mutual respect and love within families (5:21-33).

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23  As with the many ethnic neighborhoods in U.S. cities and small towns settled by people of a specific nationality, there were many Jewish communities in northern Egypt at the time of Jesus’ birth. Many of them dated from the time of the Diaspora of the Jews resultant from the Babylonian conquest in 587 B.C. By the most direct route Joseph and Mary would have traveled c. 300 miles from Bethlehem to those Jewish settlements in Egypt. When Herod died in 4 B.C. (when the Church first began dating history by the birth of Christ in the mid-6th century, their calculations were about 6 years off) the Romans divided his kingdom among three of his sons. Archelaus, who was given the area of Judea, was cruel and unpredictable. Joseph and Mary therefore decided to go to the northern area of Galilee. After a few years, the Romans exiled Archelaus to France (today that wouldn't seem like much of a punishment!) and put a Roman governor in his place.