• Isaiah 60:1-6
• Psalm 72: 2, 7-8, 10-13
• Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6
• Matthew 2:1-12

Next Sunday the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Epiphany. The name means, “showing forth”, and not surprisingly the readings for the feast speak of the light shining on the mystery of God’s plan.

Alternative Readings:

• Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3
• Psalm 105:1-6, 8-9
• Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19
• Luke 2:22-40

Families are important, but not easy; and so the Church shows immense wisdom in assigning the feast of the Holy Family to the first Sunday after Christmas, when all of us may have felt the strain of family life. The first reading for next Sunday indicates that our family, whatever you may feel from time to time, is the gift of God to us.

• 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8-12, 14-16
• Psalm 89:2-5, 27-29
• Romans 16:25-27
• Luke 1:26-28

What does God need for a Christmas present? In the first reading for next Sunday, the last before Christmas, David, abetted by Nathan, has conceived the bright idea that God might need a new house. David is in “a house of cedar, while the Ark of God is sitting in a tent!” Nathan is then very firmly instructed to tell David that it is God, and not David, who is in charge, “It was I who took you from the pasture, and from following the flock”, and that so far from David building a house for God, the Lord has already built David’s house, both in the sense of a building, and in the sense of someone to follow him on the throne. When God is in the equation, things are turned quite upside down.