We see at Luke 2: 22- 39 the presentation of Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem and the return of the Holy Family to Nazareth : " When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord ...........When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth " Matt 2:21-23 narrates the settling of Holy Family at Nazareth in a different context, that is, after the visit of the Magi, the Holy Family's escape to Egypt and its return from that place : " Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.” Jesus was dedicated in the Temple when He was just 40 days old, as was required by Leviticus 12:1-4 . On the other hand, the visit of Magi is believed to have taken place when Jesus was older , say two years (given by the massacre of children upto the age of two by Herod ) . Apparently, the return of Holy Family to Nazareth as mentioned at Luke 2:39 took place after a considerable gap of time .My question therefore is: How does the Catholic Church explain the gap between the time of Jesus' presentation at the Temple and that of His Family's return to Nazareth ?

In Eusesbius we have an interesting reference from the 2nd century Christian historian, Hegesippus, to property owned by the family of Jesus: > But when this same Domitian had commanded that the descendants of > David should be slain, an ancient tradition says that some of the > heretics brought accusation against the descendants of Jude (said to > have been a brother of the Saviour according to the flesh), on the > ground that they were of the lineage of David and were related to > Christ himself. Hegesippus relates these facts in the following words. > > The Relatives of our Saviour. > 1. Of the family of the Lord there were still living the grandchildren of Jude, who is said to have been the Lord's brother according to the > flesh. > 2. Information was given that they belonged to the family of David, and they were brought to the Emperor Domitian by the Evocatus. For > Domitian feared the coming of Christ as Herod also had feared it. And > he asked them if they were descendants of David, and they confessed > that they were. Then he asked them how much property they had, or how > much money they owned. And both of them answered that they had only > nine thousand denarii, half of which belonged to each of them. > 4. And this property did not consist of silver, but of a piece of land which contained only thirty-nine acres, and from which they raised > their taxes and supported themselves by their own labor. 5. Then they > showed their hands, exhibiting the hardness of their bodies and the > callousness produced upon their hands by continuous toil as evidence > of their own labor. Is this a reference to property owned in Bethlehem? If so, was Joseph (Jesus father) land rich (at least middle class), but cash poor when they went to Bethlehem for the census? And again cash poor when bringing the child to the temple to be dedicated? It is interesting to reflect upon the fifth pope; consecrated about 100; died about 109. The breviary of Pope Pius V. reserves Oct. 26 to the memory of *Evaristus Græcus ex Judæo parte Trajano Imperatore Pontificatum gessit.* From this it would follow that this pope was a Jew, whose father was a native of Bethlehem, and therefore, no doubt, a Roman provincial. Evaristus, then, must have been a Greek-speaking Jew, and, under the laws of the empire, a Roman subject. Another possibility is that at the time of Emperor Domitian, Jesus' family (i.e. the grandchildren of his brother Jude) owned 39 acres in Nazareth. If my calculations are correct, of those 39 acres of the approximately 60 acres in Nazareth, 65% of the land was owned by Jude’s grandchildren. If so, that's a lot of land owned in Nazareth.