Every year we take out the nativity. We arrange it carefully. Mary. Joseph. A baby in a manger. It feels sacred—one of the last spaces in our world left untouched.

But contemporary retellings challenge that calm. This year in Dedham, the Holy Family was removed and kept in the sanctuary for protection from I.C.E. In Evanston, the baby Jesus wrapped in emergency thermal blankets, his hands bound with zip ties. A few years ago in Bethlehem, a Lutheran pastor placed the Christ child on bomb rubble. We demand these displays be removed.

But what if the real danger isn’t the frame we construct—traditional crib or contemporary protest? What if it’s that we’re so busy fixing on one perfect pageant or one protest image that we miss the actual context of Jesus’ birth? We assume Mary and Joseph were turned away. Luke doesn’t say that. The Holy Family is welcomed into a warm home, pressed shoulder to shoulder with people doing all they can to make space. The house owner says: this is all we have. And it’s accepted. God is born there.

Ricardo tells us in this surprise Christmas Eve homily: God does not wait for us to clear space. He enters even when lives are full, when schedules are packed. Still, room is found. That’s the nativity we are living and called to live.

This is Ricardo’s final episode before moving to Rome in January to join the Jesuits’ international communications team. He’ll continue hosting “Preach.” from there. We’re taking a brief break and will return just before Ash Wednesday with a new Lenten series. Please fill out our listener survey—your feedback helps shape what comes next. Merry Christmas!

A homily for Christmas Mass during the Night

A manger.
Farm animals.
Mary and Joseph.
Soft light.
A stable.
A baby.

This is how most of us picture Christmas. It’s the scene that fills our churches and many of our homes—an image we take out carefully each year, arranging the figures just so. It’s familiar. It’s comforting. And it’s also an image we tend to protect.

I remember a few years ago here at Xavier, when the nativity scene was set against large photographs mounted on stacked cardboard boxes, arranged to resemble the stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. On one side, the night sky looked almost beautiful—like a meteor shower. Only if you stepped closer would you see that those “stars” were actually missiles colliding over Israel and Palestine. On the other side were the ruins of a bombed street in Kharkiv, Ukraine: collapsed buildings, shattered façades, arranged to resemble the “little town of Bethlehem,” those clustered houses we imagine in the place where Jesus was born.

Other years, the Holy Family at Xavier has been placed at the U.S.–Mexico border, surrounded by barbed wire.

And then this year, in Dedham, Massachusetts, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were removed from the scene altogether, leaving only a sign above the manger that read: “I.C.E was here.” Another sign explained that the Holy Family had been taken into the sanctuary for protection. In Evanston, near Chicago, the baby Jesus in the nativity scene was wrapped not in a warm blanket but in a foil emergency blanket used in humanitarian crises, his hands bound with zip ties. And not long ago in Bethlehem itself, a Lutheran pastor placed the Christ child wrapped in a keffiyeh atop rubble left after a bombing and said, “If Jesus were born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza.”

All these scenes—these modern interpretations of the nativity of our Lord—provoke almost immediate reactions.

Some people are moved.
Others are deeply unsettled.
Many are angry.

Some insist the displays be taken down, saying there’s no place for politics in the nativity. And if I’m honest, I understand the instinct. The nativity scene feels sacred—like one of the few spaces left untouched in our society. So when it’s disrupted, it can feel like something intimate is being handled roughly, or mishandled altogether.

I understand the desire for something constant and uncomplicated, especially in a city like this. And especially at a time when wars are raging and political upheaval feels relentless. The nativity can feel like a small, protected space where we don’t have to explain ourselves—where we can just be.

But the danger is that we freeze the story there. That we stop at the still image and forget everything around it: how we got there, and where the story goes from there.

Because the story doesn’t begin with Silent Night.
“Holy night. All is calm. All is bright.”

Luke doesn’t begin with a serene tableau of warmth and comfort. Instead, he sets the birth of Jesus against something deeply disruptive:

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled.”

Mary and Joseph aren’t traveling because they want to. They’re in Bethlehem because they’ve been displaced by a census. They’re complying with the law under duress—late in pregnancy. And those of you who have children know how ill-advised travel is in those final weeks.

And yet Luke tells us simply: they go.

When they arrive in Bethlehem, Luke says there was no room for them at the inn. And we think we know exactly what that means. We imagine frantic knocking, doors closed, rejection—an innkeeper finally taking pity and offering a stable.

But listen carefully to what Luke actually writes:

“While they were there, the time came for her to have her child. She gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

There’s no knocking.
No turning away.
No scene of refusal.

The birth happens at the first place they arrive.

And the word Luke uses here really matters. He doesn’t use the word for a commercial inn—the kind the Good Samaritan brings the wounded man to. Luke knows that word, and he uses it elsewhere. Here, he uses a different word: kataluma.

Kataluma means a guest room—a space in a family home set aside for visitors when there is room. In fact, the only other time Luke uses this word is later, when Jesus tells his disciples to ask a homeowner:

“Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover?”

So when Luke tells us there was no room in the kataluma, he isn’t saying no one would take them in. He’s saying the house was already full. The guest room was full.

Think about it. Bethlehem is a small town. Everyone has come to be counted. Not just inns, but homes are stretched to capacity. And when Mary goes into labor, the birth happens in the only space available—not private, not ideal, but available.

You see, a first-century home wasn’t divided into neat, private rooms. Most families lived in a single shared space. If they were fortunate, there was an upper room—the kataluma—for guests.

Luke’s point is simple:
They were not rejected.
They were received by a household already at its limits.

If you live in Queens, or the Bronx, or even here in Manhattan, you may recognize this immediately. Apartments where every room is spoken for. Mattresses on the floor at night, rolled up again in the morning. Living rooms pressed into service. People sleeping in spaces never meant to be bedrooms—basements, converted corners, shared rooms divided only by a curtain, if that.

In some places, you’ll find migrants newly arrived in the city sharing a single room—four, five, sometimes more—taking shifts to sleep because soaring rents leave them no other option. And the alternative is the street.

So when we go back to Bethlehem, this is the picture we should have: a place full to the brim, and yet nobody is left out. Room is still made.

That’s where the manger is placed.
That’s where Jesus is born.
A place where room is found.

There is a way to understand this story—one supported by Scripture scholarship—where Mary and Joseph arrive and are allowed in, because that is the only place where there is room. Not because it is perfect, but because it is offered.

The homeowner, in effect, says: This is all we have.

And God accepts it.

God accepts the space where someone does all they can to welcome the stranger. That’s where God is born.

And that’s a hopeful story. It tells us who we can be at our best: a place of welcome, a place of respite, a place where Christ can be born.

And I think that’s why Luke then zooms out.

While the child is being placed in a manger, Luke deliberately shifts our attention away from the crowded house and out into the fields beyond the town.

“There were shepherds living in that region, keeping watch over their flock by night.”

It’s the same night.
The same story.
But a very different setting.

Inside: a home stretched to capacity.
Outside: people with no rooms at all—no guest space, perhaps no household.

And it’s there that the angels appear.

And the sign the shepherds are given is telling. They aren’t sent to a door. They’d never be invited to knock on a guest room. Instead, they are told they will find a baby lying in a manger—a feeding trough in the common space.

The sign isn’t just that a child is born.
It’s that this child—the Messiah, the Savior—is born in a way you can approach.

You can just walk in.

Jesus isn’t locked away.
He isn’t hidden.
There’s no barrier to access.

God places him with us.

The good news of this night is not only that our God is—for all, all, all—but that God does not wait for us to clear space. He enters lives that are already full. Even there, room is found.

And that’s the invitation for you and for me.

In our fullness.
In our busyness.
In our packed lives.

Can we make room? Can we be as open as the shepherds to the message of the angels?

He is Emmanuel—God with us.
Here.
Now.

“Born to us is a Savior, Christ the Lord.”

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace
to people of goodwill.

Merry Christmas.

“Preach: The Catholic Homilies Podcast,” hosted by Ricardo da Silva, S.J., helps Christian preachers develop their craft and captivate their congregations in more effective ways.