Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
The readings today speak of the persecution of those who serve God and do good to people.
Such persecutions are instigated by the devil, who hates God's people and does not want them to do good. In Egypt, he had success with a gentler strategy. After some 400 years, among the Egyptians, the Hebrews had mostly forgotten the religion of Abraham. But the devil knew that the time was approaching for the fulfillment of God's words to Abraham.
For God had said to him, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward, they shall come out with great possessions. To oppose this, the devil stirred up the Pharaoh against the Hebrews. This Pharaoh, ignorant of what Joseph had done to save the Egyptians from starvation, feared that the Hebrews, a race of East Semitic nomads, could unite with other East Semitic peoples whose attack he feared. So he reduced them to slavery and had them build two store cities. St. Ephraim wondered why there was any need to build store cities if Joseph was able to store up enough grain to feed Egyptians and foreigners for seven years. Perhaps it was just an excuse to keep the Hebrews busy. But that word can also mean armories, a place for storing weapons rather than food. So perhaps he was preparing for war by enslaving potentially disloyal resident aliens and building armories or forts. The two cities were in northeast Egypt, where the Hebrews were living, and a direction from which an attack was likely to come. This means of oppressing the Hebrews was insufficient, so Pharaoh then turned to genocide. The boys are the ones who could grow up to be soldiers, so it would be sufficient to eliminate them. Plan A was to do it secretly. Infant mortality was already naturally high, so if the midwives could kill the baby boys while they were assisting a childbirth, the deaths might go unnoticed. But the midwives refused to cooperate. God rewarded them for this, as he rewards today's obstetricians who refuse to cooperate with a culture of death. Plan A having failed, Pharaoh comes up with plan B, throw the baby boys into the Nile. If abortion fails, let's try infanticide. Here too, there's a question about the translation. It could also mean expose the baby boys on the Nile, that is, put them into baskets and set them on the river. This, in fact, is what Moses' mother will eventually do with him. The idea of entrusting their fate to the river god or to God might be more palatable than simply flinging baby boys into the river, and Pharaoh can expect similar results either way. Let us now consider the spiritual sense of these events. St. Paul saw in the Exodus a prefiguration of the liberation of Christians from the slavery of sin, and the fathers of the church further developed this idea. The devil tries to ensure that men will not fight against him by enslaving them in sin. As our Lord says, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. He has his slaves make bricks of mud to build cities for storing arms. Sin works with earthly things, represented by the mud, and this work soils those who do it. The bricks are baked in the sun, and so when sin is hardened, it is built into a fortress for the devil against his enemy, Christ, and the church. Our Lord speaks of this in the Gospel, in a parable, when a strong man fully armed guards his own palace, his goods are safe, but when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor, in which he trusted, and divides the spoil. Now the strong man of the parable is the devil, fully armed by the hardening of sin. He is so powerful that we cannot defeat him with all our strength. Had not the Lord been with us, then would they have swallowed us alive. But the stronger man, Christ, attacks him and overcomes him by divine power. This divine power he lends to us as his grace, and so in us overcomes the enemy. This takes away the protection of hardened sin, in which the devil had trusted, for grace can change even the heart hardened in sin. So we can now sing, blessed be the Lord, who did not leave us a prey to their teeth. We were rescued like a bird from the father's snare. Saint Augustine explains, we have been led out of Egypt, where we were serving the devil as a pharaoh, where we were doing works of clay amid earthly desires, and where we were laboring much in them. For Christ cried out to us as if we were making bricks, come to me all you who labor and are burdened. Led out of here, we were led over through baptism as through the Red Sea. Red for this reason, because it was consecrated by the blood of Christ. When all our enemies who were assailing us were dead, that is, when our sins had been wiped out. He speaks from experience, for he once labored much amid earthly desires, and found that only Christ could free him of his sins. The devil oppresses those who do not yet belong to Christ, for fear they will turn against him. He quite literally instigates the killing of babies, but he also tries to eliminate new Christians, spiritual babies, before they become strong in grace and virtue. But his persecution largely fails to achieve the desired result. When the Church is persecuted, it grows. The blood of Christians is seed, as Tertullian said. The more you shed the blood of martyrs, the more new Christians sprout. Today's Gospel speaks of that persecution.
Christ is addressing the apostles, who will almost all be martyrs. He is the Prince of Peace, and yet he has not come to bring upon the earth peace, but the sword. He has come to divide the world between those who follow him and those who reject him, and sometimes they will literally use the sword. The line of division will even run through families.
Jesus quotes the prophecy of Micah about the division between parents and children, and that one's enemies will be those of his household. What are we to do? Cling to Christ. Love him more than parents or children. Take up the cross that these terrible situations impose on us, and carry it to the end. For to give up faith for the sake of family unity would be to consign the whole family to hell, where there is only division. On the other hand, suffering to be faithful to Christ is a most powerful means of converting souls. So let us trust in Christ and in his grace to overcome the strongman and despoil him of the souls whom he holds captive. 
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.

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