“It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” (Romans 13:11)

This week, we continue to live the joy of Christmas within the Octave of the Lord’s Nativity. We also observe the Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This weekend we reflect on what it means to be family- not just in our homes, but also as a Church, a people, and a global Christian body bound together in the mystery of Christ.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting Nazareth and standing before what is believed to be the ancient home of the Holy Family. Our local guide, a Christian woman raised in Nazareth, shared how she and her brother would play among the ruins as children. “We used to play house in the house of the Holy Family,” she said with a smile. Today, that same home is behind a locked iron gate. You can peer in, but you cannot enter.

That image of children playing where the Word became flesh and dwelt among us reveals something of the beauty and meaning of the mystery of the Incarnation. What we believe is not an abstract doctrine but a lived reality, grounded in family life, in ordinary homes, in the sounds of children laughing and learning to love. And yet, like the iron gates at the entrance of the home in Nazareth, there is also a challenge. We must be careful lest, as Bishop Ruggieri recently said in a podcast, we become curators of a museum rather than missionary disciples of a living Church. That’s the challenge. Now that December 25th has come and gone, we can be tempted to pack up the decorations and move on. We can lock away the mystery of Christmas behind the gates of sentimentality or nostalgia, when instead it is meant to break open our lives.

Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium, echoes this concern. He reminds us that to say “Yes” to Christ, as we do at Christmas, we must also say “No” to the comfort of spiritual worldliness. Christmas is not merely a season of festivity; it is the radical proclamation that God has entered the world to save it, and we are called to live differently because of it. The Holy Family was not preserved from hardship. They fled to Egypt, endured exile, and lived in poverty. Their love was not sterile but sacrificial. Their household was the cradle of a divine mission.

This calls us to remember our extended family, especially our Christian brothers and sisters in the Holy Land. In Bethlehem, Gaza, and the West Bank, many families this year are celebrating Christmas in fear, hunger, and uncertainty. I think again of the locked gate at Nazareth. So many Christians today cannot access the places where Jesus walked, not because of reverence, but because of violence. And yet these Christian families remain. They stay not as relics of history, but as living witnesses of Christ’s presence: His birth, His suffering, His Resurrection. Their faith is a light in the darkness, and we owe them our prayers, our support, and our solidarity.

My dear friends, as we enjoy the warmth of family and the joy of the Christmas season, let us not forget that Christmas is far from over. The Church gives us an entire octave, twelve days, and several weeks to celebrate. Why? Because Christmas is not an end- it is a beginning. It is the hour to awaken to Christ again, to live not just for ourselves but for others. It is the time to reassess our comforts, to become again a family on mission. May we rejoice not only in the birth of Christ, but in the call He places on each of our lives to say Yes, to live with purpose, and to love like the Holy Family. In particular this week, may our prayers rise especially for those who make that love visible in the very land where it first appeared.