Swept to Safety
In the entirely of salvation history, there are stories, major and minor, that all play their part. Every episode that made its way into the Bible contains enough truth and wisdom to fill a book of its own. This is especially true of the story of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt.
Although it takes up less than a quarter of one page of even a large print Bible, the story contains rich theological value. In it, we glean insights into the silent character of St. Joseph.
In his familial hometown, but away from his adult home, Joseph dutifully brings his young family to obey the order of Caesar. On the outskirts of town, in some empty cave or abandoned barn, the child who is entrusted to Joseph is born. While he sleeps, an angel again visits Joseph in his dream, this time with an urgent warning. The enemies of the child are gathering, seeking his life, and Joseph must spirit him away.
Quietly and in haste, Joseph loads up his family and journeys across the frontier to and into the relative safety and anonymity of Egypt.
As the dragnet was pulled across the whole kingdom of Israel, Joseph slipped through and frustrated the first challenge to Christ incarnate. This early attempt to end his life prefigures the future attempts, and effaces the threat to the global order that this infant presented.
Joseph is understood to be a deeply prayerful man. Angels visit him in his sleep, a sign that even in the quiet, idle moments of his day, he is disposed to prayer and receptive to the voice of God. He never speaks, and never questions these celestial messengers, but humbly obeys them to the letter.
King Herod, though subordinate to Caesar and his governor, still wielded immense and oppressive power over his subjects. The search must have been massive, as Herod reacted with wanton cruelty to the words of the magi. Despite the scale of the manhunt, Joseph, a simple carpenter, outwitted them all. He strongly and silently swept his family to safety.
The Great I Am
Born on Christmas Day is the King of Kings.
He arrived in a damp, cold, dark place, in some cave in the backwater of a once-great kingdom, to a people oppressed by their rulers, foreign and domestic. He chose to reset the global order not in a time of fast communication and stable democracies, but in a time of mass illiteracy, brutal tribalism, and gruesome cruelty.
In the midst of this chaos arrived the great I Am. The spark He struck has turned into the roaring flame that spread through the whole world. None of it was possible without a God whose love for His people could not be contained, or without the simple “yes” of a newlywed couple that brought the Christ-child into their home.
Rethinking Everything
The new year is just around the corner. In just over two weeks, 2024 will be in the books and a fresh new 2025 will be staring us down. Perhaps instead of tinkering around the edges with tired New Year’s resolutions, we should rethink everything.
Children are notorious for leaping to the next developmental stage without telling their parents. I find myself with children who are big enough to take on additional responsibilities in our home, but I’m still doing all the same work I’ve done since they were infants.
Every so often, we need to take a step back, and question everything that we do. What should we start, continue, and stop? This is easiest to do around major milestones in our year or lives, but if we haven’t done it in a while, this is our sign that today’s the day to rethink everything.
Nothing to Do
Last weekend, I drove solo with my two oldest children across the country. There was plenty of screen time, but perhaps more surprisingly, there was a healthy dose of just time in the car. I played my soft music, and the two of them sat in the back seat. They read, they talked, and they played.
My children have constantly shifting friendships, but thankfully little conflict. Stuck in the car for two days, their imaginations sparked, and they found endless ways to pass the time. It is so gratifying as a parent to experience this; in the down moments, they fill the void with creative play.
As an at-home dad, I feel the pressure to be my children’s cruise director, curating activities to fill their day. There’s a time and a place for that, but there’s also plenty of benefit to them having nothing to do.
Arrival
With Thanksgiving behind us, we’ve entered into what feels like the busiest time of the year. In just four weeks, Christmas morning will be here, followed shortly thereafter by 2025.
This holiday season, Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year, is a stressful time, but there’s a certain peace that permeates the air. Maybe it’s the cold weather slowing us all down, or perhaps it’s the slowdown at work that gets us feeling this way. Though our to-do lists don’t get any shorter, it feels like we finally have permission to set aside some tasks and not be in such a hurry to get everything done.
Though that all may be true, there’s something else that causes us to pause; anticipation. We know of the impending arrival of Christmas, and the joy of the Christmas season. Everything around us reminds us of that fact, and it soaks up our attention. From the music on the radio in stores, to the sudden shift in liturgical decor, to the decorations across town, Christmas is top of mind. For one brief month, the whole world around us wants us to be distracted from our daily responsibilities and challenges and focus on Christmas.
The Messiah is on his way, and will arrive soon. What that means, a child born for sacrifice, connects us directly to the freedom of Easter. His arrival marks the beginning of a new chapter in civilization, where we can all see the great light and experience our hope, fulfilled.
Advent is a time of distraction, holy distraction. There’s plenty to do, and more that still needs to be done, but everywhere we look, everywhere we go, and everything we hear all calls our hearts back to the true joy of the season; the arrival.
Gratitude
And just like that, the end of 2024 is upon us. We celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, and many of us will be traveling across town or across the country to spend time with family.
My daughter asked me what we’re thankful for on Thanksgiving. I told her that we’re thankful to God for all the blessings in our lives. The debt of gratitude we owe to God surrounds us; from the very relationship He seeks to share with us, to the fact that we’re sitting in our climate controlled homes reading this blog post on a magical rectangle.
There is much to be grateful for, even on our darkest days. We were made for this place and this moment, and along with that purpose comes the side benefit of living in the most technologically advanced and comfortable society in the history of humanity.
This week we will collectively pause to reflect on the many blessings in our lives. May we be truly grateful for all that we have, and may God’s blessings continue to fill our lives in the days to come.
Written for Me
Though I haven’t committed to routine self-improvement in the past two years, there was a recent time in my life where it was always top of mind. The last big undertaking was in 2022 when I completed Ascension Press’ Bible in a Year podcast. That was the first time in my life that I read the Bible and truly studied it as a comprehensive work, and the payoff has been huge.
Although the Bible was authored thousands of years ago and 5,000 miles away, it applies to my life today as it did to the authors then. It’s a book of human stories and experiences, that repeat throughout our lives. No matter the situation that I find myself in, I can almost always find a direct relationship to a story or character in the Bible. In those times, it feels as if it was all written only for me.
Filled with dark imagery, unimaginable suffering, and challenges that I hope to never confront, the thread of hope weaves throughout the chapters and verses. At the end of the story, no matter how dark things get, Light returns to assert dominion, the greatest triumph of all.
Thank You
I have written many posts over the years marking Veterans Day. This is a day for us to pause to not only thank those who gave us everything, but the many, many more who gave part of their lives to protect and defend us and our way of life. This self-sacrifice is among the highest of human ideals and for that, all I have to say today is, thank you.
One Second
On Saturday, I made a scheduled site visit for work. It’s a bit of a hike to the office, just over 2.5 hours, but the drive is mostly on big open roads. It was a normal Saturday, almost boring.
I wrapped up my work and swung into a local gas station to fuel up and grab a snack. After getting my gas, I went inside and quickly picked up my food. Checking out, though, was weird. I tried to use the self-checkout, but it was painfully slow between my four items. The fourth one just would not scan. The manager insisted that the system was fine, but I hopped over to a cashier anyway. I had similar trouble with my debit card.
I got into the car and, as I pulled away, I prayed the Traveller’s Prayer. I usually pray it when leaving the house on this trip, and can’t recall a time I prayed on the return trip; I always just figure once per trip is fine.
The drive was busier than usual, cars moving slowly and keeping me from an easy cruise-control drive. Things were really slowing me down. The path is on a wide four-lane divided highway, with long stretches of open road between tiny towns.
There is one town, in particular, where the speed limit drops precipitously as the divided highway gives way to a 5th paved center lane. It’s known for speed traps, so regular drivers know to take it slow. As we neared the end of the city limits, I was eager to accelerate, but cars in the left and right lane were blocking my way.
As I moved into the right lane to pass the driver cruising in the left, my eyes were drawn to a gold Toyota Camry crossing the center lane, entering the left lane, and coming right at me.
When I was in high school, I participated in a teen defensive driving program called Driver’s Edge. Sponsored by insurance companies and professional driving tracks, the one-day course creates a safe and controlled environment where teens can push cars to the limits in extreme driving scenarios, and understand how to react. The instructors are nearly all professional drivers.
In that moment, when I perceived the car coming at me like a YouTube dash cam crash video, I reflexively reacted. I jammed the accelerator and made an evasive swerve away from the oncoming car. The car passed by close enough that I could see the driver’s face, and slammed head-on into the car behind me. Had I reacted one second later, or braked instead of accelerated, it would’ve been me.
I remember three still frames from that moment; when I first noticed the car, the blank look on the driver’s face as he passed by, and the moment of impact behind me as seen through my rearview mirror.
I stopped, along with many other drivers. We did what we could, but the situation was dire for the wrong-way driver. From the entire time I saw his car in motion, there was no reaction. Combined with the blank look on his face, it appeared that he was unaware of what was going on. He wasn’t much better when we reached his car, he was seriously injured, in pain, and fading. He lost consciousness as the paramedics arrived, less than 10 minutes after the collision, and did not recover.
It was comforting, in the days before the contentious election, to see who we really are as a country. All of us who stopped had somewhere to be, and no idea who these people were. But we saw that they were in trouble, and we helped.
Speed wasn’t a factor in this accident, merely the violence of two cars traveling at speed in opposite direction violently colliding. One second and a few feet is what made the difference for me on Saturday afternoon. I’m confident that I would’ve been okay, but it was still terribly sad for the driver to experience a medical episode, lose control of his vehicle, and die with such numerous and traumatic injuries. I was one of the last people he spoke to in those 10 minutes as he faded away, and pray that whomever he was, he went from speaking to me to standing in the presence of God Himself.
Overflowing
A good way to think about our lives, especially our spiritual lives, is as a cup. We can choose what we fill it up with. Things of beauty, prayer, the Sacraments, and acts of virtue fill up our cup to the point where it overflows.
When our cup is overflowing, it’s extraordinarily difficult for sin to enter into our lives. We are fulfilled, living life by God’s design, and there is simply no room for temptation to gain a foothold.
In the same way with time and our day, when we fill up our day with the things we must do, there is neither time nor opportunity for anything else. By filling up our spiritual life with these good things and heavenly delights, we can accomplish the same thing.
We carry the same habitual sins into the Confessional month after month, year after year. It can be easy to make small pivots and adjustments to increase our chances of overcoming this sin, but why not just completely snuff it out? Give it no quarter, no room, no attention. Even a giant log is no match for a river with a strong current.