This is Our Family: The Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus 2025

This is Our Family:

The Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus 2025 

December 28, 2025

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Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24

 

I am certain that many homilies today are in support of refugees, displaced persons, and immigrants, and rightly so. Our care for our brothers and sisters is of paramount importance, and they comprise our holy family, which is the reason for today’s feast. I want to first comment of the underlying systems that cause displacement. We first must start with Herod, the man whose kingship felt threatened by the birth on a child, and I ask this question: What could love have done if we had loved in time? 

Herod grew into an insecure man who consolidated his tenuous power, and because of his self-doubt, killed thousands of innocent children in the hopes of eradicating all enemies and sent many into exile. In his childhood development, what happened? Did he not receive the proper love to settle his anxious ambition? I think of the inseparable relationship between love, power, and justice. Without love, power becomes tyranny; justice is rule for the strong. Without power, love is reduced to sentimentality. Without justice, love is an odd dance of domination. 

The question stands: What could have happened to Herod if he had been sufficiently loved to settle his anger? And today, who are the Herods in our lives that we need to love so fully to calm one’s rage or insecurity? Love is the only power in this world to halt the progress of evil in its tracks. This is hard work to do, especially when those Herods enrage us. The lives of many people hang in the balance.

The church asks us to see one another as brother and sister, especially the poor and those in great need, like immigrants. This is the holy family. Our Christian love, truly lived, breaks down every barrier, unites strangers, reconciles enemies, and brings close those who were distant. This is awesome. Our love has the power to convert the hearts of the Herods of our time, even if it seems impossible. We need our love to be without limits. We are the church, and the Church that sets no limits to love produces miracles.

God’s gift to us at Christmas is God’s very presence: Emmanuel. God is with us. No one is excluded from that love. Not a soul. God does not divide people into categories. It is time for us to break down our divisions, move away from rigidity and idealism, and find our common humanity in one another. There is not a person who is not saved already. Christ already saved us when he accepted the Cross. There is nothing we can do to change the course of salvation history. God’s consciousness is much bigger than you can ever imagine. You are in God’s heart, mind, and memory – forever – and ever – and ever. I hope you can fully receive that felt knowledge of God’s personal love for you – the one that beholds you with joy, that admires you for all the good you have done, that honors you for touching the lives of so many people. Because we belong to God, we belong to one another – as gifts to be cherished and honored and shared – with great dignity. 

We must be God’s love in action. We must be the love that reconciles, the invites, that affirms and even converts the hearts of our Herods. We must bring love to places where love has been absent. We must bring love to places where love once existed and now is no more – in broken relationships. We must be the love that leaves the church walls and sanctuaries to encounter those who hunger – those who do not have faith, those who have left because of disappointment, those whose hearts are heavy or damaged, those who are blinded by power. I must examine my consciousness to see if I have sufficiently received the love of God and the love of others. I don’t want to be a Herod. Is there a place in my life where I need to transform anger and judgment and replace it with love? Do I have the courage to give love a chance? It may indeed save lives; it will certainly save souls. 

We are invited to be God’s presence to those who seek greater meaning. We are to harness the power of God’s love and set this world on fire, and we shall know, with deep assurances, that God is truly with us. We shall know that God more than sufficiently loves us.