Like that of Jesus, the lives of many today are threatened by the Herods “obsessed by the fear of being dethroned”. Pope Leo, in the Sunday Angelus in which the Holy Family is remembered, explains the Gospel which «proposes to us the story of the “flight into Egypt”. It is a time of trial for Jesus, Mary and Joseph. In fact, almost suddenly, the disturbing shadow of a shadow is projected onto the bright tableau of Christmas mortal threat, which has its origins in the tormented life of Herod, a cruel and bloodthirsty man, feared for his brutality, but precisely for this reason profoundly alone”. A man who «feeling threatened in his power, decrees the killing of all children of the age corresponding to that of Jesus. In his kingdom God is realizing the greatest miracle in history, in which all the ancient promises of salvation find fulfillment, but he is unable to see this, blinded by the fear of losing his throne, his riches, his privileges.” He doesn’t see the light, he doesn’t see the joy. «Nothing manages to penetrate beyond the armored defenses of the royal palace, except as a distorted echo of a threat, to be suffocated in blind violence».
Leone, while praising «the value of the presence and mission of the Holy Family which, in the despotic and greedy world that the tyrant represents, it is the nest and cradle of the only possible response of salvation: that of God who, in total gratuitousness, gives himself to men without reservations and without pretensions”, he also looks at today’s Herods at the “myths of success at any cost, of unscrupulous power, of empty and superficial well-being”. Myths which, however, have the price of “loneliness, desperation, divisions and conflicts”. He then invites us not to let “these mirages suffocate the flame of love in Christian families. On the contrary, we safeguard in them the values of the Gospel: prayer, attendance at the sacraments – especially Confession and Communion – healthy affections, sincere dialogue, loyalty, the simple and beautiful concreteness of everyday good words and gestures. This will make them a light of hope for the environments in which we live, a school of love and an instrument of salvation in the hands of God”, as Pope Francis also said in the homily of the mass for the X World Meeting of Families.
At the end of the Angelus, he then asks us to continue praying for peace and, in particular, relying on the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth, he asks us to pray for the “families who suffer because of war, for children, the elderly, the most fragile people”.
