Homilies & Thoughts

Most evenings are not dramatic. They are ordinary: the same rooms, the same chores, the same tiredness, and the small frictions that appear when two lives share one home. Many of the Lord’s hard teachings can be attempted at a distance—one generous act, one patient response, and then we slip away to quieter company. Marriage is different. It places love in the same room, day after day, and trains the heart in the quiet courage of staying.

N.B. This weekend was the annual Bishop’s Appeal.

Picture a small clay lamp on a rough table in a Galilean home. It is not a sealed lantern with glass and metal. It is an open flame, steady and exposed, giving light as long as it is fed. Jesus says, “Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket,” and the image lands with force in a world where fire is never merely decorative. A basket over a flame does not simply hide the glow. It catches fire, it smolders, it collapses into ash.

Most of us learned the faith with a checklist in hand. Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not harm. Those commandments matter. They guard human dignity and teach what love refuses to do.

But a Christian cannot live only by asking where the line is. When the heart is trained to look for the minimum, it begins to treat God like a strict referee, watching for a foot out of bounds. That mindset shrinks the spiritual life into anxiety, as if holiness were mainly the art of avoiding mistakes.

News travels fast when a prophet is taken away. John had been preaching in the rough country across the Jordan, telling the truth plainly to the man who held power. Herod Antipas tried to solve a moral problem by putting the messenger in chains. The arrest was meant to end the noise; instead it became the spark that set everything in motion.

The moment Jesus hears of John’s imprisonment, he does something that looks, at first glance, like retreat. He leaves the wilderness and heads to Galilee. Yet Galilee is not a safe hiding place. It is Herod’s territory. Jesus steps straight into the same domain that just proved it is willing to silence God’s word.

At the request of the bishop, I want to share with you the story of how the Lord led me to this altar—not because my story is the pattern for everyone, but because it is one example of how patiently God can pursue a heart.

I was not born Catholic. In my earliest years, my family raised me in the Episcopal Church, and that is where I was baptized. Later, as the Episcopal Church continued along its present trajectory, we left. We went to a Southern Baptist church, and I spent more years as a Baptist than anything else.

At the edge of the Jordan, there is a line of ordinary people stepping down into the water—tired, hopeful, carrying secrets, searching for a new beginning. John stands there, calling hearts to turn back to God. Then Jesus arrives. Not as a spectator. Not as a judge. He walks into the same river, into the same current, into the same place where sinners are admitting they need mercy.

John recoils, because he recognizes the truth: Jesus has no sin to wash away. He has no stain that needs cleansing. Yet Jesus does not keep himself at a safe distance from the human condition. He chooses nearness. He chooses solidarity. He chooses to take on the weight of humanity—not because he is forced, but because love is never afraid to step into another person’s burden.

If you grew up in a world where faith was stitched into your bloodline—your clan, your language, your land—this story would sound almost unbelievable.

A caravan arrives from the east: learned men, court advisers, readers of the skies. Not Israelites. Not worshipers of the God of Abraham. Astrologers—outsiders—men whose practices many in Jerusalem would have distrusted or dismissed. And yet they come with aching purpose, asking for a Jewish king they have never met, guided by a sign they can barely explain. Their whole journey can be summed up in one sentence: “We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” That line is the shock of Epiphany.

2026 began with the same homily I preached at the beginning of 2025. I have changed assignments since then, so it was new to my current parish. It is not my most well crafted homily, by any means, but it is one of my favorites. May the Mother of God bless you all this new year.

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.

Joseph falls asleep with a decision already made. He has weighed the options, tried to keep his conscience clean, tried to do the least damage. He is a righteous man, and that righteousness does not make the situation simple. It makes it heavier.

Then God interrupts his careful plan—not with thunder, not with certainty, but with a dream. And the angel speaks a sentence that is almost startling, because the Gospel does not use the word “fear” until the angel names it: “Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.”