December 21, 2025
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Fr. Piermarco Luciano
May the Lord grant you His peace! I am fr. Piermarco and I am in Ein Karem at the Sanctuary that Tradition hands down to us as the place of the birth of Saint John the Baptist.
On this last Sunday of Advent the liturgy, once again, allows us to see in the Child who will be born the fulfillment of an ancient promise whose realization the righteous awaited, placing their hope in its coming to pass.
We know what happened when “the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man of the house of David, whose name was Joseph. And the virgin’s name was Mary.” (Lk 1:26b-27).
The account we have just listened to is the story seen from Joseph’s perspective. The text defines Joseph as a “righteous man”: what does this mean? Righteous is one who acts and judges according to justice, but the definition of justice in the Bible is different from ours: a righteous man is one who before anything else and above everything else seeks the will of God and the way to accomplish it. And Joseph is such a man!
We have also heard that Joseph, precisely because he was righteous, decided to divorce Mary quietly after she was found to be with child through the work of the Holy Spirit. What Joseph has in mind to do is something strange, not foreseen by the Law of Moses: why such a decision? Does he suspect Mary? More than one Father of the Church (people who have enlightened the Church with their holiness and their doctrine) proposes a very different explanation: Joseph trusts Mary and, having recognized that what is happening in her is the work of God, thinks it best to step aside, withdrawing before the greatness of God.
But he too has a place, and not a secondary one, in this plan, and it will be revealed to him in a dream by an angel. In the Bible, as in the cultures of ancient peoples, dreams were considered a means through which God revealed Himself. Especially the earliest books of the Bible recount how the will of God was manifested to the patriarchs through dreams.
And Joseph welcomes the overwhelming intervention of God in his life, and with his obedience he too takes part in the plan of salvation that God is carrying out; he becomes the legal father of Jesus, introducing Him into the lineage of David, into the living stream of promise and hope.
What does this say to us? We are preparing to relive the birth of Jesus, the Word made flesh, God with us, who even today asks to be welcomed, not in the grotto of Bethlehem but in the heart of every believer. But Jesus is welcomed in order to be given! This is what Mary did, this is what Joseph did, this is what the Apostles, the Disciples and all the saints did. The story of Joseph teaches us that every time God’s faithfulness encounters our faith/trust (faith/trust verified by obedient listening to the Word of the Lord), we become collaborators in the work of salvation, we allow Jesus to become present once again in the world through our life.
Let us then entrust our life to the Lord as He has entrusted His to us: may Jesus dwell permanently in our heart, filling it with that Peace and that Goodness sung by the angels on the holy night. This is the wish and the prayer that I make for myself and for you for the feast, now near, of Holy Christmas.
