Watch Stephen Colbert Explain His Absence....Hilariously

Family emergency notwithstanding, Stephen Colbert just didn't miss a beat.

The Comedy Central faux-pundit host of "The Colbert Report" taped his show's first new episode since tapings were briefly halted midway through last week. Starting with the Feb. 15 episode, fans were treated to reruns through the rest of the week as Colbert tended to his seriously ill, 91-year-old mother Lorna back home in South Carolina. The emergency hiatus marked the first in the show's history, though such a measure isn't without precedent on Comedy Central.

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Colbert's former stomping grounds, has halted production twice - once for the birth of Stewart's second child, and once following a staff member's unexpected death.

But Colbert's absence had been pretty widely explained throughout the week. Instead, he cleared up just what exactly hadn't happened to him.

"The hub around which the Republic turns" assured what must now be a relieved Colbert Nation that the Federal Election Commission had not requested that Comedy Central kill his show. Nor had he offended the Catholic Church by calling the Pope's hat a "a gigantic yet stylish prophylactic." He has also absolutely not had major plastic surgery....on his face.

All that being said, check out the video below and pay close attention at the end for the kind of special trip to a beloved mother that only Colbert could deliver.

May God bless the United States of South Carolina.