Nativity with Gloria in Excelsis, Luca della Robbia, 1465-ish
Msgr. Pope with tough medicine on this feast of the Holy Family. Also:
The old Simeon, in particular, inspired by the Holy Spirit says about the child Jesus: "He is destined for the fall and for the rising of many in Israel and as a sign of contradiction [...] so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare.”
These prophetic words reveal that Jesus came to bring down the false images that we make of God and of ourselves; to "contradict" the worldly certainties on which we claim to support ourselves; to make us "rise up" to an authentic human and Christian journey based on the values of the Gospel. There is no family situation that is precluded on this new path of rebirth and resurrection. Whenever families, even those wounded and marked by frailty, failure and difficulty, return to the source of Christian experience, new paths and unimagined possibilities open up.
~Pope Francis, Angelus for feast of the Holy Family, trans. by Fr. Dennis Brown
