December 28, 2025: Finding Our Home
FINDING OUR HOME
This is the Christmas season. It doesn’t end until the Baptism of the Lord on January 11. So keep your decorations up until then. Anyway, this season it filled with emotions . . . with gatherings, parties, liturgies, but there can be some sadness also . . . a longing for what was.
[I sing verse one of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”]
I'll be home for Christmas You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe and presents under the tree
It was originally written for soldiers during World War II, but it remains so popular because to strikes something within us. It speaks of
Longing for connection
The importance of belonging
The emotional power of Christmas as a symbol of reunion
Today, on the Feast of the Holy Family, the Gospel invites us to wonder if Jesus felt those kinds of things.
Matthew tells us that shortly after Jesus is born, his family is forced to flee. Joseph wakes Mary in the night. There is no time to pack, no goodbye, no certainty. They become refugees, escaping violence, living in exile. The Son of God begins his life not surrounded by stability, but by danger, displacement, and fear.
The Holy Family probably knew what it was to: long for safety, to search for belonging, to live with uncertainty. They knew that “home” is not always a place you can return to.
Notice something important: home for the Holy Family was not a geographical location. It wasn’t Nazareth, Bethlehem, or Egypt. It was love. It was trust in God. It was the presence of God (Creator), the faith of Joseph, the yes of Mary, and the vulnerability of the Child. The same is true for us.
What makes Christ Our Light a place to call home is not the walls, or stain glass or the altar. If those were gone, Christ Our Light parish would still exist. Home for us is wherever we gather in the name of Christ. Because Jesus was born, died, and was raised; we see beyond what is visible and hear beyond what is audible.
Maybe that is why a song like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” carries such emotional power. It is never just about one date on the calendar or a journey measured in miles. It is about reunion. It’s about belonging. It’s about the deep human hope that somewhere—somehow—we are accepted, remembered, and welcomed.
In Christ, God has come home to us, and hopefully we can learn what home truly is. Not a perfect family. Not an unbroken past. Not even a place we can always return to. Home is relationship. Home is being held by God when everything else feels uncertain.
For some of us, this season is joyful; for others, it carries sadness. Some have returned home during these Christmas days; others are missing a home that no longer exists (I certainly am, as we prepare to sell the place I grew up in). Some gather around full tables; others have empty chairs at the table.
The Holy Family stands with all of us. They remind us that holiness is faithfulness in uncertainty, it is love on the move, and hope that refuses to disappear, even in the darkest times.
In the birth of Jesus, God says to us: You can count on me.
Count on me to stay with you when the road is hard.
Count on me when home feels far away.
Count on me when your deepest longing has no easy answer.
Because sometimes, home is not something we can reach with our hands. Sometimes it is something we carry in our hearts. Sometimes it is something we glimpse only in longing, only in trusting, only in the hope we carry all year long. Sometimes this can seem like a dream.
I'll be home for Christmas You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe and presents under the tree
Christmas time will find me Where the lovelight gleams
I'll be home for Christmas If only in my dreams.
