We wait in joyful hope. So continues the new church year, Cycle B, with the season of Advent.

In today's first reading, King David learns that honoring God can sometimes mask an attempt to put God in a box.

Knowledge is power, according to Sir Francis Bacon. If that’s true, then the unknowable future is the place where we find ourselves most vulnerable.

I stumbled upon the Angelus while taking a university course on the poet T.S. Eliot. My favorite literary work is Eliot’s Four Quartets, wherein he speaks repeatedly of the Annunciation and the “clanging of the bell.”

From early in our childhood it was drummed into us how valuable our family name was. We were taught that we were to do nothing that would embarrass the family in any way.

Brothers and sisters, as the celebration of the birth of our Lord draws near, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son, humbler and loftier past creation’s measure

Browse our library for additional Fourth Sunday of Advent, Cycle B material.