Matthew 2:13–23

 

“Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt…”

 

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

 

Yesterday I went to church still full of Christmas dinner and slightly frayed around the edges.

 

Prime rib, mulled wine, a house full of light and boxes and paper—
and, if I’m honest, more than one moment when my tongue was quicker than my love.

 

The to-do lists got shorter.
The expectations did not.

Somewhere between the wrapping paper and the dishes, I snapped at the person who loves me most.

They did not deserve it.
The fork did not deserve the way I banged it down, either.

 

It is a strange thing to stand in front of icons of the Nativity, candles flickering, while knowing that only twenty-four hours earlier I was treating my own little domestic Bethlehem with more irritation than reverence.

 

And then the Gospel for the Sunday after Nativity arrives like a cold wind through an open door.

 

No angels in the sky this time.
No shepherds running.
No Magi with gifts.

 

Just a warning, a flight, and a slaughter.

 

Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt…
for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.

 

+++

 

The Church, in her unnerving wisdom, refuses to let us keep Christmas as a soft-focus postcard.

 

Right in the middle of our leftovers and carols we are given this story:

 

Joseph waking from a dream with his heart pounding.
Mary gathering the Child in the dark.
The hurried packing.
The road into a foreign land.

And behind them, the soldiers.

 

St. John Chrysostom says that God could have destroyed Herod in an instant, but instead He chose to save the Child through Joseph’s obedience and flight—so that we would learn how divine providence and human cooperation work together.

God does not only protect by miracles.
Sometimes He protects by saying: “Get up. Go now. Trust Me in the dark.”

 

Meanwhile, in Bethlehem, the unthinkable.

 

Herod, terrified of losing his tiny scrap of power, orders the killing of the infants around Christ’s age. St. Gregory the Theologian calls these little ones “the flowers of martyrdom,” the first small offerings to the One who will later offer Himself.

 

They do not speak, they do not choose, and yet they are gathered into Christ’s own Pascha as a kind of first-fruits.

 

The Kontakion for their feast sings:

 

Herod mowed down the innocent children like wheat,
lamenting that his power would soon be destroyed…

 

Joy and terror.
Lullaby and lament.

 

From His first days on earth, Christ is hunted.

 

As Fr. Thomas Hopko writes in The Winter Pascha, the Child is chased from Bethlehem to Egypt, and later from city to city, “because the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

 

The question he poses is painfully direct:
Are we ready to receive Him—and love as He loved us, even to the point of death?
Or do we, in our own ways, join those who “receive Him not”?

 

+++

 

It is easy to keep the story safely in the past.

 

That Herod.
Those soldiers.
Those mothers in Bethlehem.

 

But the Fathers and Mothers of the Church won’t let us off quite that gently.

 

They insist that the Gospel always happens in us.

 

Herod is not only a figure in history. He is also a condition of the heart.

 

St. John the Theologian is blunt:

 

Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3:15)

 

No sword.
No orders.
Just hatred, and we have already joined the wrong side.

Abba Dorotheos, in his teachings on self-accusation, says that when we nurse resentment, judge our neighbor, or insist on our own way, we “strike our brother in the heart,” even if our hands stay folded politely in our lap.

 

And if I look honestly at my own last few weeks—the rushed errands, the tight shoulders, the sharp replies when I’m cold and tired—I can see it:

 

There is a little Herod in me who does not like being inconvenienced, who fears losing control, who would rather keep my carefully curated peace than welcome the living God when He comes in a form I did not plan for.

 

I do not send soldiers.
I just send sarcasm.
Or resentment.
Or withdrawal.

 

It is smaller, yes.
But it is born of the same fear:
If Christ truly reigns here, I will not.

 

+++

 

And then there is Egypt.

 

Egypt in Scripture is usually the place you leave: the land of slavery, idolatry, the house of bondage.

 

But in this Gospel, Egypt becomes something else.

 

The prophet Hosea’s words are fulfilled: “Out of Egypt I called My Son” (Hosea 11:1; Matthew 2:15). The land that once held Israel in chains becomes the refuge of the Christ Child.

 

St. Cyril of Alexandria says that by going down into Egypt, Christ “puts to flight the vain worship of idols” there and begins to sanctify the nations.

 

The very soil of fear and exile becomes a place of salvation.

 

St. Maximos the Confessor would later say that the “Egypt” each of us carries is that inner region of the soul where our passions, memories, and fears dwell—a kind of wilderness we would rather avoid. But it is precisely there that Christ chooses to go.

 

He does not only meet us in Bethlehem, where everything is lit and arranged.
He meets us in Egypt—
in the hospital room,
the therapy chair,
the quiet kitchen after an argument,
the grief we thought we were done with,
the ordinary Monday where we feel more numb than holy.

 

“Out of Egypt I have called My Son,” the Father says.

Out of that place.
Out of your place.
Out of the very circumstances you would not have chosen.

 

+++

 

This is where the Holy Innocents pierce me most.

 

They are the ones who suffer because someone else clings to power.
They are the ones whose names are known fully only to God.

 

Their feast is not sentimental. It is a protest.

 

It stands beside every child harmed by war or abuse, every unborn child discarded, every small one caught in the crossfire of adult fear and sin, and dares to say:

 

God sees.
God remembers.
There are no forgotten children in the Kingdom.

 

St. Romanos the Melodist imagines them as a choir of infants, taken up into heaven as Christ’s tiny companions, “crying out before Him without words,” their very existence a hymn.

 

And if that is true, then the Gospel is not asking me simply to feel bad about Herod long ago.

 

It is asking:

 

Where, in my own life, do I quietly accept the suffering of the small and the powerless because it is inconvenient to change?

 

Where do I scroll past other people’s children in other people’s wars and think,
“That’s terrible,” and then return to my shopping list untouched?

 

Where do I allow the “Herod in me” to win simply by not looking?

 

+++

 

Back in our little Oregon house by the creek, the contrast is jarring.

 

A heated dog mat on the couch—our small dog stretched out like a small queen.

Leftover sweet potatoes from the Midwestern farm share.
Candles in the windows.
A tree blinking patiently in the corner.

 

It is all so gentle. So domestic. So far from the sound of soldiers’ boots.

 

And yet, if I sit quietly for even a moment, I can feel the Gospel pressing in:

 

Will you let Christ flee into your Egypt?
Will you carry Him into the places you are tempted to avoid—your weariness, your impatience, your very ordinary holiday sins?
Will you let Him reign there, where Herod usually does?

 

Fr. Thomas Hopko writes that Christmas confronts each of us with this choice:
To receive the Light and walk in it, or to “love darkness rather than light,” in a hundred small, polite ways.

 

The question is not abstract.
It is as concrete as my next conversation,
the tone of my next reply,
the way I speak about those who irritate or offend me.

 

+++

 

I would love to say that, after hearing this Gospel, I came home and became instantly sweet and serene.

 

I did not.

 

What I do have is a slightly sharper awareness of the battle.

 

I see more quickly now when Herod raises his head in me:
when I want to win the argument,
to protect my comfort,
to cut with words rather than be silent and pray.

 

And in that moment, I know that my choices—small as they are—either echo Bethlehem or Bethlehem’s slaughter.

 

St. John Climacus says, “Do not be surprised if you fall every day; do not give up, but stand your ground courageously,” trusting that the angel who guards you will honor your patience.

 

Maybe, for most of us, that ground is not a battlefield.
It is the living room, the office, the supermarket line.

 

It is the decision not to let Herod have the last word.

 

+++

 

Here on this Monday after the Feast, with crumbs still on the table and the Church’s hymns of the Holy Innocents lingering in our ears, perhaps our prayer can be simple:

 

Lord Jesus Christ,
You were hunted from Your first days on earth.
You fled with Joseph and Mary into Egypt.
You received the infants of Bethlehem as the first blossoms of Your martyrs.

 

Have mercy on the Herod in me.
On the fear that makes me harsh.
On the self-love that makes me blind to the small and the vulnerable.

 

Enter my Egypt.
Sanctify the places I would rather not visit.
Let Your light shine in the darkness of my own heart,
and in all the places where children suffer because we love our comfort more than Your Kingdom.

 

Teach me, in very small ways,
to choose You instead of Herod today.

 

Christ is born.
The Light has come.
The darkness has not overcome it.

 

May He flee into our hearts as He once fled into Egypt,
and may He find in us—not a palace of power—
but a humble place where He is finally received.

 

Amen.

Perpetua

🕯️ Postscript: A Word from the Saints

 

Herod sought to slay the Lord of all,
yet he became the murderer of many infants.
They died for Christ’s sake, though they did not know it;
their mothers mourned for the Lamb, not yet knowing that He would wipe away every tear.

— St. Gregory the Theologian, On the Holy Innocents (paraphrased from his Orations)