January 7, 2026

By Father William Muench
NCC columnist

Today, I would like to start by telling you that I had a very happy Christmas week this year – plenty of family time. I celebrated Mass on Christmas Eve and Mass on Christmas Day. I focused my homily this year on peace, peace for this world of ours. I believe our dedication to be peacemakers was our most important gift on this Nativity of Our Savior, Jesus Christ. I did travel on Christmas Day. I went out to visit my sister, Anne, and my brother in law, Larry, and their family. I then headed home a bit tired, so I stayed put for the evening. I just settled down and watched, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It was a happy Christmas for me.

Then on Sunday, I celebrated the Feast of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I consider this a very special celebration. On that Sunday, I began my homily by reminding everyone that we should celebrate and pray for our own family. I propose that nothing more matters than that we aim to make our family the happiest family on the face of the earth. Then I encouraged that we all make our parish a real family as we pray for each other and make certain to help any families in need.

Then I took one more step: I encouraged people to realize that everyone should be considered family – with a real concern for each other, praying that God’s happiness and peace is our goal. I know that each year as we celebrate the beginning of a New Year, this could be the year that we all work for universal peace. Our patron, our model, for us all is the Holy Family – Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

This year on Holy Family Sunday, the Gospel reading was the story about St. Joseph being instructed by an angel to take Jesus and Mary to Egypt – because of the threat from King Herod. Thinking of that scene, I imagined the Holy Family as refugees, homeless refugees.

They were asked to leave homeland, security and legal protection; they were refugees. I remember that Pope Francis once wrote, “Jesus is a migrant. He had to flee with his family to Egypt to escape Herod.” Years ago, Pope Pius XII once wrote, “The Holy Family of Nazareth fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family.”

Jesus Christ begins his saving work not from a throne but as a child in exile. Many spiritual writers speak about God entering human history through vulnerability not power. Jesus, Our Lord and Savior, comes among us as a humble teacher. He humbly suffered for us. Yet, Jesus’ first steps on earth were taken as a displaced child. This year, on the Feast of the Holy Family, we see Jesus, Mary and Joseph sanctifying the experience of refugees, migrants and the homeless. As disciples of Jesus, we are challenged to care for the migrants among us, here in our own land.

Pope Leo XIV recently reached out to us in an apostolic exhortation – demanding solicitude toward migrant refugees, those who have left home not simply to seek a better life abroad but who are forced to take flight because of violence and oppression in their own nation. Pope Leo writes: “The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking where the world sees threats, she sees as her children; where walls are built, she builds bridges. The Church knows that in every rejected migrant it is Christ Himself who knocks at the door of our community.”