Hi, I'm Matthew Kelly, and it's great to have this time with you. I love this period between Christmas and New Year's. It's always been a time of reflection for me, a time of dreaming and planning the year ahead, and reflecting on the year that has been. And so I hope you're taking a little time to slow down the speed of joy, as we talked about during Advent, and to reflect on how God has worked in your life in the past year, and to open yourself to Him working in your life in the coming year. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Matthew 2:13-15 and 19-23.

Now, when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt and remain there till I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt, have I called my son?" But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel. For those who sought the child's life are dead." And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, "He shall be called a Nazarean."

So each day we look for a word or a phrase or an idea that jumps out at us that the Holy Spirit uses to capture our attention. And for me today, it's this idea of God communicating with Joseph in dreams. Specifically, the idea of waiting for another message. So the angel appears to Joseph in a dream the first time and says, "Herod's trying to kill the child. Take the child and his mother to Egypt, and wait there until I say so." I think about our desire to control, our obsession with planning, and need to be in charge. And I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd do very well with that situation. Off to Egypt and just wait for the next message. And I think that the amount of trust that is required to follow God's call is enormous. And here we have Joseph at every turn, just waiting on the Lord's command, waiting on the Lord to direct him. I think we rush through the Lord's command sometimes. We rush through the Lord's call. We're in such a hurry that we run past Him. We run past His call. We run past His invitation. We run past His direction. And we're onto the next thing. And of course, being onto the next thing, we are lost. Because whenever we're not in His call, we are lost. Have a great day, and remember, be bold, be Catholic.