Hi, I'm Edward Sree, and welcome to all things Catholic Catholic where real faith meets real life.

Hello and Merry Christmas to you from here in Denver, Colorado. I have a short Christmas

reflection for you from the scriptures. Are you ready? It begins with this question.

If I were to tell you about someone who was the divine son of God. He was the Lord, he was the

Savior of the world, he was someone who brought glad tidings, good news to people on Earth,

and he brought peace on earth and his birthday was celebrated

around the world as the beginning of a new era.

Who would you think I was talking about?

Caesar Augustus of course, the Roman Emperor.

Now, I'm pretty sure many of you thought I was going to say Jesus Christ,

which makes sense in our 21st century Christian world,

but I want to bring you back to the world of the

holy family of Mary and Jesus and Joseph in the first century because those very

titles and accolades and descriptions were given to the Roman Emperor of the time

and that was Caesar Augustus. Let me tell you a little bit about him and why he had those titles and why it's

so important for us to understand this background if we really want

to understand the Christmas story that Luke's Gospel tells us every year at Christmas.

So, Caesar Augustus emerged as a great ruler in a time when Rome was thrown into chaos.

He was a great hero because he reunited the Roman Empire and brought peace to the land after Julius Caesar's assassination.

So after that time there was great chaos, there was great division in the Roman Empire,

many rival factions vying for power and eventually Caesar Augustus emerged as the sole ruler and got the title

Caesar and he was considered to be a savior figure someone who saved Rome from destruction, saving Rome from itself and

...