Sunday, December 28, 2025
Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
Fourth Day in the Octave of Christmas
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Gifts of the Magi
As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved,
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness and patience.
Bear with each other and forgive one another
if any of you has a grievance against someone.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
And over all these virtues put on love,
which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
since as members of one body you were called to peace.
And be thankful.
Walter Wangerin, author of the adult Bible storybook called The Book of God, has also written many stories for children. Among them is Mary’s First Christmas, a beautiful picture book of bedtime stories that Mary tells young Jesus about his birth. She told Jesus of the visit from the Magi:
After your birth, Yeshi, Joseph and I found a little house in Bethlehem where we lived for several years … one afternoon you ran into the house with your eyes as round as millstones … There were camels coming to our little house – and on the camels, men who had traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles across the desert from foreign lands to Bethlehem …
“We have come,” they said, “to worship the one who has been born king of the Jews.
“Look,” one of them said, and he pointed to the sky. I came out and looked up and saw the bright star in the daylight sky – right over our little house!
“We are called Magi, Wise Men. We can read the stars as if they were words on a page. And that star says that the child who lives in this house is the king we are seeking.”
You, Yeshi. They had come to see you …
Yeshi, you were not even two years old. But after the Wise Men said these things I saw you change. All at once you seemed to be a thousand years old! You walked into the house. You sat down with your back to the wall and folded your arms and waited for the Magi to come to you.
I said in my soul, “Who is this child?”
One by one the men came in. One by one they kneeled down before you. One by one they placed gifts at your feet: gold and frankincense and myrrh. And I shuddered, because gold belongs to kings, and frankincense is given to God, and myrrh is what we put on the people we love when they die.
Oh, Yeshi, such a glorious future was laid out before you then! And the worship of the Wise Men was as if the whole world had come to know you and to honor you.
That night both Joseph and one of the wise men had dreams. The next day he and his family fled to Egypt, avoiding the sharp knives of Herod and his henchmen. But Jesus’ future was secure … as king, as murdered man on a cross, as God.
Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night
and departed for Egypt.
He stayed there until the death of Herod,
that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled,
Out of Egypt I called my son.
Jesus: little baby, growing boy, strong man, carpenter and incarnate God.
(Sirach 3, Psalm 128, Colossians 3, Matthew 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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