Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Everything about Luke's familiar Christmas story is surprising. Mary and Joseph, the inn, the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, the manger, the angels and shepherds--all challenge our ordinary conceptions of what is good, right, and powerful. Listen again to this story and hear it as, in the strict sense of the term, "subversive."

One of the most popular saints in the Christian tradition is Joseph, the husband of Mary. We see in the Gospel for the fourth Sunday of Advent that Joseph is a man willing to situate the struggles and uncertainties of his life in the context of a divine plan whose contours and purpose he cannot fully grasp. He is willing to think and act "outside the box," and this makes him a model for us Advent people.

St. James reminds us that an essential element of the Christian life is waiting. As the farmer waits for the precious yield of the earth, so the believer waits while Christ does his mysterious work in the world. Thus we must learn the virtue of patient expectation.

As we commence a new liturgical year, the Church invites us to survey the world from the standpoint of Isaiah's holy mountain, the height to which all the nations stream. This is a beautiful image of ""communio,"" of the many gathered around the one, and it is reflective of the fundamental ""communio"" which is the Trinity, three persons constituting the one God. When we look at things from this perspective, we see them aright.

John the Baptist is, along with Isaiah and the Virgin Mary, the great figure of Advent. We hear his voice in the desert, summoning us to repentance and readiness. When we have purified our minds and hearts, we are able to receive the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit, the fire of God's very life.