#12512 What Should We Make of the Hidden Years of the Holy Family? - William Albrecht

Catholic Answers Live

Catholic Answers

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“What should we make of the hidden years of the Holy Family?” The Gospels provide limited insight into this period, prompting questions about what we can infer. Additionally, the discussion touches on the nature of Hophni and Phinehas’s sins, the relationship between baptism and circumcision, and the implications of Leviticus 12 regarding purification after childbirth.

Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter

Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit Catholicanswersspeakers.com

Questions Covered:

01:58 – The Gospels tell us very little about the hidden years of the Holy Family—what should we make of that, and what do we actually know about them?
12:00 – In today’s reading, Hophni, and Phineshs, what was the nature of their sin, different bible’s translate them differently.
15:20 – How does baptism replace circumcision?
20:48 – Leviticus 12, When woman goes to temple after giving birth to offer the sin offering for purification would that apply to her child as well?
24:26 – Can a priest or extraordinary minister deny someone communion during communion service?
33:39 – How do we clarify that Mary and Joseph’s marriage was consummated but not in the traditional sense of having intimate relations?
42:25 – Does Jesus have two souls, one eternal and one from his incarnation?
49:27 – Catholic faith teaches that believing in miracles is optional, but if we reject modern miracles would we be rejecting dogmatic miracles from the past?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Buying or selling your home, real estate for life can connect you with a pro-life real estate agent.
0:05.2	When Real Estate for Life receives a referral fee, they donate 65% to Catholic Answers.
0:11.5	Learn more at realestateforlife.org. Welcome back. Catholic Answers live. Really, I feel like I'm in the Christmas spirit today. I'm in the Christmas spirit.
0:40.5	William Albrecht is here with us.
0:44.4	Earlychurchfathers.com, patristicpillars.com.
0:53.7	He's done yeoman's work for us this year, just tons and tons of shows with us to help us out many times when we needed them. And so I'm really glad we got William
0:56.3	here with us as we finish out the year. And I'm going to, I am going to go to the phones. I want to
1:03.8	say, look, I know you think I don't notice, but I noticed that most of you didn't ask questions on the
1:09.9	topic we gave you for the first hour. I noticed. And I expect they're going to have the same trouble out of you, all you people, for the second hour. Because it's, you know what it is? It's this time of the year, William. People get unruly. They just do whatever they want. Teachers can't control the kids in class. Everybody's out of control. So they're just going to ask whatever they want. So I'm going to ask for calls on the topic. We're going to discuss the topic for the hour. And then I guarantee you we'll go to the phones and it will be about whatever the person wanted to talk about. It will have nothing to do with what we wanted to talk about. I think you're going to be right. We want to talk about
1:44.6	the Holy Family. I mean, it's Christmas week. Let's talk a little bit about the Holy Family. So if you've
1:49.9	got questions on the Holy Family, 8883187884 is the number. And we don't actually learn very much about
1:57.2	the Holy Family in the Scriptures. Or maybe we do. Maybe I'm getting that wrong, but my impression is it's mostly hidden from us, the life of the Holy Family. So what should we make
2:06.6	of that fact that there's so little in the Gospels about the Holy Family? And what do we actually
2:12.2	know about them? Well, to be very clear, the purpose of the gospel itself is who Jesus is, what he did to save us,
2:22.8	and how his real bodily death and bodily resurrection, how they fulfill Old Testament
2:29.9	Scripture. Now, is there complete silence? I wouldn't say there is. And in fact, we're reminded that St. John
2:38.7	pretty much tells us that there are many other things that Jesus did. Or every one of them to be
2:44.4	written. The world itself could not contain the books. So there's a lot of things we don't have written.
2:48.9	Now, what do we know? Well, it is brief,
2:51.7	Sigh. You're right about that. But I think we know a good amount. We know that Jesus grew normally,
2:56.8	according to the gospel of St. Luke. In fact, St. Luke tells you, he grew and became strong,
3:02.8	filled with wisdom. So he had real human development, real learning. We know he learned there in the temple very often.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 2 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Catholic Answers, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Catholic Answers and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.