Homilies & Thoughts

A house can be holy and still be hurried. Picture Joseph waking in the dark, heart pounding, listening to a message that feels like both mercy and emergency. There is no time for long conversations, no time to tidy loose ends. A child is lifted, a mother gathers what she can, and a family slips into the night—because God has chosen to save the Savior by sending him away.

The startling part is where they go: Egypt. Not the postcard Egypt of museums and pyramids, but the Egypt that lives in Israel’s memory: the place of slavery, the furnace of temptation, the land from which they once begged to be freed. It had become a symbol for everything that crushes and corrupts. And yet the angel says, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.”

Most of us will spend Christmas afternoon doing something wonderfully unglamorous: rinsing dishes, finding the missing piece to a toy, checking on an older relative, driving home in the dark. It can feel almost jarring to hear the Church speak, on a day like this, about eternity, glory, and the mystery of God.

And yet that is exactly where Christmas aims—right at the ordinary.

We sometimes imagine the Incarnation as a kind of divine fireworks show: a miracle meant to prove that God is powerful, and a ladder meant to lift us out of this world and into the next. If that is all it is, then the best Christian life would be the one that escapes the mess: less work, fewer meals, fewer conversations, fewer interruptions—just “spiritual” things.

Tonight the story begins with paperwork: a ruler’s signature, a decree, an empire’s gears turning. Caesar Augustus wants the world enrolled. Not because he is curious, but because names on a register become taxes, and taxes become leverage. Rome calls this order. Rome calls this peace. Rome even calls it, in its own way, salvation.

Augustus knew the power of religious language. He was Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar; when Julius was officially declared a god, Augustus became the son of god. The title sounded like heaven, but it served the throne. The Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, was real—roads were safer, borders steadier—but it rested on the threat of the sword. Revolts were crushed. Crosses lined the roads. Fear did a great deal of Rome’s governing.