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The Season of Advent: Panel Discussion
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Panel Discussion: Questions & Answers
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- [00:00]
Dr. Jim Prothero
And now we want to take your questions. So we've got a lot of questions submitted about Advent, and we have a panel. And so joining me for the panel is Dr. Jim Prothero and Dr. Michael Barber. And I'll be correcting their answers and making sure that they give you the right ones. But it's a joy. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the panel discussion.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Thank you.
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Unknown Speaker
Thanks for having us.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Terrific. Well, let me jump in with. There's two sets of questions as I see them. A lot of the questions came in good theological or historical questions that relate to Advent or Christmas. And then there's another series of questions that are about practical application for the liturgical season. So I'm going to start with a little bit more of the exegetical liturgical questions or theological questions especially. So here's the first question. When John the Baptist is born, his father Zechariah proclaims that the Lord has raised up a horn of salvation for the house of Israel. Right. And his servant David, it seems to be a reference to Jesus. But why is he called a horn of salvation? And this is a good example, isn't it? If you don't know the Old Testament, the New Testament seems awfully strange at points.
- [01:08]
Unknown Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. Do you want me to speak first? Sure, sure. So this is one of those things both with knowing the Old Testament and also with Bible translations. In the Hebrew language of the Old Testament, you can read it through the Psalms a whole lot. There's a lot of times when God is described as a horn or raising up a horn of salvation for us, and sometimes that gets kind of translated out, depending on what version of the Bible you have. So if you know from the liturgy, the Benedictus. Right. In the song about John the Baptist, you say, oh, there's a horn, but you haven't seen that in your Bible translation. It might seem really strange, but really right. The horn is a symbol of power and of victory. And if you think about the horns that they used to blow in the Old Testament when they would go in both in the liturgy, but then even when they would go into battle, they would blow the horn of victory. And beautifully, they would blow it before they actually started the fight, because they knew and were confident in God's provision for them that he would grant them the victory because he is our rock and our salvation. Do you want to add to that?
- [02:17]
Dr. Michael Barber
I can't trump that. I'm horned.
- [02:21]
Dr. Jim Prothero
You can't toot your own horn?
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Dr. Michael Barber
I can't.
- [02:26]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Speaking of the horn, and of course, you mentioned the Benedictus. And I think of Hannah at the beginning of her great song predicting the coming of this great king for Israel, who will be David. And she talks about God lifting up this horn. And so this imagery of lifting up the horn, the strength, also the idea that the horn sometimes could be some kind of flask for the anointing, oil for the anointing of kings. And so there seems to be several things with, as you mentioned, strength, power, calling upon the Lord, and the idea of something regal or anointed for the coming of the Messiah. So it really is a rich image that's borrowing from the Old Testament. And again, if you don't know the Old Testament, you're not going to hear the New Testament. Well, and that's one of the things we hope throughout this conference and all of our Bible conferences here at the Augustine Institute, we help you fill in some of those Old Testament backgrounds to understand the New Testament. Well, another question comes in. If the names of the wise men, Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar don't come from the Bible, alright, so they're not in the Bible, where do they come from? So where do those names come from?
- [03:32]
Dr. Michael Barber
Right. Well, I talk about that in this book that I wrote on Christmas and I actually trace out where these different names come from. And we see them in actually the first inscription that we know of is in a church in Ravenna and we have some of the names there. And then in the Syriac tradition, it's not actually three wise men, but many more. And they have different names as well. But the names that sort of become the most familiar come to us through a writing that was actually wrongly associated, now we know with Bede, but it was thought to be written by Bede. And here is what that passage reads. The first of the wise men is said to be Melchior, an old man with white hair and a long beard who offered gold to the Lord as to a king. So you'll see that sometimes in displays of the manger. The second, Gaspar by name, young and beardless and ruddy complexioned, honored him as God by his gift of incense, an oblation worthy of divinity. The third, black skinned and heavily bearded, named Balthazar, by his gift of myrrh, testifying to the son of man who was to die. And so it's these later Christian traditions and people are a little unclear on where some of these names really emerge from. And you know, you can read the book and see some of that. But the key thing is that the three wise men symbolize peoples from all over the world. And so the Magi represent what happens at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. The Magi are in Matthew's Gospel. At the end of the Gospel, Jesus sends the disciples to baptize, make disciples and baptize all nations. And so the Magi are sort of like the first fruits of that.
- [05:15]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah, that's terrific. Are you familiar with the Armenian tradition? There's Armenian tradition, too. That was pretty old about naming those three, too. But I think that one of the oldest depictions of the wise men is in the catacombs of Saint Priscilla. And so probably talking about early to mid around 250 A.D. and it shows the three wise men, and it has them in different colors, so it's faded. We can't tell any kind of ethnicity or where they're from. But you get that sense that they're distinct and that there's something universal about the three.
- [05:50]
Dr. Michael Barber
One of the interesting things is that the Magi were depicted as Persians in a mosaic in the Church of Nativity. And when Muslim forces came to destroy Jerusalem to sack the city, they went into the church and they saw these Persians on the wall. And so they dec not to destroy that particular church. And so the church of Nativity survived because the invaders saw themselves in the depiction. Which is a really amazing story.
- [06:14]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah, the depiction of the magi. I mentioned that in my talk.
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Dr. Michael Barber
That's great.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
But it's. Yeah, that's a great scene. It's a great scene. And it's one of the. It's the only church that the Persians don't burn down and destroy.
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Dr. Michael Barber
That's right.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Because it has the image of their ancestors that they could recognize. So there's something. The continuity of the depiction of the Magi and people from the east and Persians had magi. So it's kind of fascinating to see that continuity. Well, here's a question. In Matthew's Gospel, it says, Mary was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Can you shed some light on what this means? Who found this? Joseph or someone else? So you want to talk about biblical expressions now? Might be. Sometimes we're reading these idioms of scripture, even though they're translated in English. Sometimes it's an idiomatic usage, and it might seem a little odd to our common day. English expressions. I think it's chapter one, verse 18.
- [07:15]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. So in Matthew 1:18, now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph. Before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Now the phrase here you can see she's found to be with child. That means that it's discovered, right? But that the child is from the Holy Spirit also is added in. So on the one hand we're talking about something that like people can recognize, right? That Joseph can tell. Right. And this is the introduction to Joseph's own decision making process and his thinking about what's gone on here before he's informed by the angel that it really is from the Holy Spirit, but she's found to be with child. There's not a sort of extra special meaning, it doesn't seem, other than that it's discovered and here particularly by Joseph, we don't hear about anybody else finding out about it in this passage. The point is that Joseph knows and Joseph needs to have an angel come and tell him, hey, wait, this is from God. Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. You can see this kind of expression in lots of different places. So in Philippians 3, 9, Paul says that he wants to be found, to be in Christ. You say, like who's going to find him? Is he lost? Right. Is it? What's going on? Well, no, he just means he wants it to be clear. He wants it to be manifest. In Romans, chapter four, verse one, Paul says, have we found Abraham to be our father according to the flesh? In the book of Sirach, when it talks about God seeing the secrets of their hearts, it says that God found them or that the secrets of their hearts or the sins of their hearts were found. It's not like they're lost and somebody's searching for it. It just means that it has become manifest, it's become clear to somebody. And then you have to decide who it is that it's clear to from the context that in this case clearly it's Joseph.
- [09:15]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Thank you, Dr. Perother. I think that gives us some. Fills that up pretty well. Let me move on to the next question. Increasingly I've heard more and more people, even some priests, explain the star of Bethlehem as a natural phenomenon that coincided with the birth of Jesus. Is this legitimate interpretation of the star that the magi saw? And I suspect I'll take this to you, Dr. Barbara. I suspect this is becoming even more popular after Pope Benedict XVI's book on the infancy narratives because he refers to this with obviously with Kepler and. Well, I'll let you explain this.
- [09:53]
Dr. Michael Barber
Right. So there's a discussion about whether or not this is some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon or whether it's something else. And there's Lots of people who would love to say, well, we know it's this comet or this planetary conjunction that took place, and then we can date birth of Jesus. But if you go back to the early church, they were not really interested in trying to correlate it with science from the heavens. Really, only after you get people who are interested in astronomy that you find these techniques. And one of the great church fathers is John Chrysostom. John Chrysostom explains that it's very difficult to imagine that this is some kind of just natural, ordinary phenomenon, because what happens is the magi are led to Jesus birthplace by the star. And I could read the section in the book. I'll just encourage you to check it out. It's on page 120 to 123 in my book. But one of the things Christensen points out basically is, you know, let's say I invite you over to my house for dinner. I'm going to say, all right, it's under this star. You can't give directions to your house by trying to figure out what star that house is under. It's not going to work too well. And so what the church fathers understood is that the star had to have come down some way, had to descend somehow to be able to identify the place where Jesus was born. Of course, that's not something that comets typically do. They come down, they come back up. And so if you go back and you look at ancient Jewish writings like the book of Daniel, Daniel Chapter 12, or Revelation Chapter 1, Stars and Angels are often interchangeable. And Chrysostom, for example, argues that, no, this is an appearance of an angel, an angel who's guiding them on the way, just like angels appear in the Gospel of Luke to the shepherds, although the angel looks like a star in the story of Matthew. So I take that view. But there are different opinions on this. I tend to agree with Chrysostom, though, that it would be very difficult for this to be some kind of like, planetary conjunction. It's that house over there, you know, and it's worth.
- [12:08]
Unknown Speaker
If I could jump in, it's also worth saying to the question, the question doesn't just ask, do you agree with it? But ask, is this legitimate? And it's worth remembering too, right? When we're having these conversations, Pope Ben Benedict XVI takes this view. And certainly within our own theology, we can say that God moves things miraculously, and yet he does it according to what they are, right? When somebody's healed of being lame miraculously in the Gospels, right? It also Means that all of their ligaments go back together so that they can keep walking. It's not like it's sort of poof. Bionic. Yeah, exactly.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Right.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
No, I think that's an important point. So in terms of hearing this from a priest, it's not disbelieving to think that there was, as people like Kepler and I know Pope Benedict XVI thought that this idea of the planets aligning at about this 7 BC 6 BC by the time we think Jesus was actually born, that could possibly be that it was Jupiter and Saturn that are aligned and at that time with Mars. And so could it be a natural sign? Could it be an angelic, supernatural sign? We know God is the author of nature and of new creation and of angels. And so he has the authority to deal with this as he will. And so either ways would be appropriate interpretation of Scripture see it as a natural phenomenon or a supernatural. And I think you find both in the Catholic tradition. Who are the heavenly host singing Glory to God in the highest? Are all these angels?
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Dr. Michael Barber
That's a great question. It does seem like the term especially refers to angels.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
I'm sure they're not stars because sometimes stars and angels are synonymous.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Dr. Barber. Very good. Yes. I'll have to think more about that. But I think I'm going to go with this mostly being angels here, primarily because Luke actually tells us that it was angels. Right. He says that a multitude of the heavenly host appeared with the angel who had already showed up at the scene. Right. So we read that. Then they went back to Bethlehem and they explained everything that had happened. And so it does seem to me in the story that it's especially understood to be angels when the angels went away. Reread. So, yeah, this is the secret. But the thing that's, I think, helpful.
- [14:44]
Dr. Jim Prothero
For people, not stars.
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Dr. Michael Barber
I just want to make sure, because.
- [14:49]
Dr. Jim Prothero
After your last answer, I'm a little kid.
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Dr. Michael Barber
I'm going to go with angels on this one. But I will say that it's important to help people understand what host means, because when people hear the word host.
- [14:57]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Again, that's another biblical idiom.
- [14:59]
Dr. Michael Barber
Right. I think when people hear host, they think of someone who's, you know, showing hospitality to guests. Right. Or, you know, kind of sponsoring a party or something like that. That's not what the word here means. It's a word for armies. Right. And I talk a little bit about that in my presentation.
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Unknown Speaker
I thought it was somebody who made little chocolate candies, you know, little cakes with the. Did you buy in a box? No. Okay.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
So that one I thought would be an easy one. So now the Bible says little about St. Joseph and never mentions his age. So why is he always depicted as an older man, older than Mary?
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Unknown Speaker
Well, I can start this and you can fill it out. So for one thing, it's typical that the man would be older. For another, especially in the east, in Eastern Christianity, it's an understanding that Joseph was quite old and maybe even had been a widower. Right. And that he had married Mary to care for her and protect her, but not as a sort of like normal marriage where you might get two, you know, 20 somethings or a 30 something man and a younger woman who would be expected to and planning on having children. Right. So this is one of the traditions, especially in Eastern Christianity, that's really popular. There's also questions about his longevity. So if you read in Scripture, as the question says, right, he's not mentioned all that much. And by the time you get to mark, chapter six, when Jesus is 30 years old and he's going around, people say, hey, don't we know this guy? Isn't he? And in Mark's Gospel would say the son of Mary. And some people take that to mean that, well, maybe they're identifying him as Mary's son because Joseph's dead.
- [16:51]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah, that makes sense.
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Unknown Speaker
And so there's a lot of that. Of course, there are different ways in which the reality of St. Joseph, even if we don't in fact know his historical age, has been depicted in the church, right. With St Joseph the work of very muscular and young, and then also St. Joseph the caretaker, right, the older, wise caretaker of Mary and of Jesus who is older. And so you have all of these representations of the sort of reality of Joseph, even while there's questions that we have about his age. Do you want to. How would you.
- [17:24]
Dr. Michael Barber
Yeah, I think another reason a lot of people imagine Joseph's older is because by the time you get to Jesus public ministry, he's not mentioned as present. And so it seems that Joseph has died by the time Jesus begins his public ministry. And so people think, well, he must have been older already and that's why he already passed away, which again was common, right? I tend to think so. Those are all the reasons why. And I do detail this a little bit more in the book, but I tend to think that he's not older. And the reason for that is when Luke talks about, for example, Zechariah, who's John the Baptist, he makes a point of saying he was an old man. He doesn't say that about. He doesn't say that about Joseph. Matthew doesn't say that about Joseph. He's just called a man. And so it would have been unusual had Joseph been much older to Mary. It wasn't the norm. You would expect that to be mentioned. The other reason Joseph is also frequently depicted as older is because a lot of these apocryphal stories about Jesus childhood want to emphasize that, of course, Mary remained a virgin. So they want to talk about how Mary is a virgin. And to emphasize that point, they often make Joseph older. And I feel like this is a little bit unnecessary because Joseph isn't necessarily chaste because he's old. He might just be chased because he's virtuous. Right. So for all of these reasons, I tend to move away from the idea of Joseph being older. But those are the reasons why it's often mentioned in the tradition. It would not be unusual for Joseph to have died at a younger age, given life expectancy in the ancient world.
- [19:09]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Good. Now we'll move to some of these questions that have some application. Do you have any recommendations for celebrating the season of Advent as a family and not just spending all of December and it's already Christmas mode? So how do we celebrate Advent as a family? And I know that on form there'll be lots of shows really diving into this, how to prepare and how to celebrate Advent. But let's tease that out a little bit with just an example that you guys do in each of your families.
- [19:39]
Dr. Michael Barber
One of the greatest traditions is the Jesse Tree tradition, where as a devotional, there are different materials you can use, but you look at the way Christ is fulfilling types in the Old Testament, and sometimes it's like a picture of something you open up for each day, an image. And that is a really beautiful way to help people prepare for Christmas. I do want to say, I think sometimes people draw too sharp of a line between Advent and Christmas because I've been in some places where people are like, well, you can't talk about Christmas yet. It's not Christmas, it's Advent. You can't prepare for Christmas unless you're talking about it though, Right? I mean, we do want to talk about the Christmas story. So I do think reading the Christmas story with your children is a very beautiful way to prepare for Christmas and explaining the things that we do as part of our Christmas customs. It's also really helpful so that when they come into the season, formal season of Christmas, they know what they're looking at.
- [20:35]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. In our house, we've Tried different things. And there's some things that we do kind of all the time. And there's other ones that we go, oh, that's a good idea, because we hear it from somebody else and then we try it and we go, oh, we'll do that again. Or no, maybe we won't. But anything that sets apart the season and communicates to. My oldest is 7 and my youngest is 10 months. So we run the gamut. And this would be different if you've got older children or a bigger age spread. But we. In the mornings for Advent, I'll jump. Instead of doing our regular round through our children's Bible or whatever, we might start doing the readings for the week in small chunks with a parent or with Brother Francis or something unformed. Explaining them.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Right.
- [21:24]
Unknown Speaker
The parent would be the most important one, of course, but explaining them and just talking about these things. Because if the children are hearing the promise of Christ's coming and of his second coming, right? And having it even in a couple of verses taught to them, explained to them, that really sets the tone. What we do mostly is we have an Advent wreath and we'll do the psalms for the week around that. So we have a small Advent wreath like you'd have in a parish, and we put it on our table and each of the kids get to light it for each meal. And we'll say different prayers, right? So we might change it up from the Hail Mary to the Our Father, right? Or we might change it up and let each of the kids pray for some individual, particular person or particular intention that we all focus around. And that not only sets the season apart, but that can set the season apart. But then we're also doing the readings and talking about adventures and themes, waiting for the Lord. You can do little penances with your family. Like, okay, we're not going to do dessert after meals. I'm not saying that you can't have any sweets all of Advent or that you can't have cake at a party, but I am saying we're not going.
- [22:32]
Dr. Jim Prothero
To do a. I knew you were going to bring in penance. I knew you were going to bring, you know, I knew you were going to bring penance into Advent. You know, there's the Grinch that stole Christmas. But you're going to make sure that we don't. Santa Claus doesn't steal Advent.
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Unknown Speaker
That's right. It's not going to steal Advent.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
I love it.
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Unknown Speaker
I love it.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Well, that's terrific. And I know there's so many different practices you can do. One of the things that our son always loved us growing up was having a Nativity set. And so, as Dr. Barber said, Avid's getting ready for Christmas. And so Christmas is certainly on the horizon and it's visible. You've got the Nativity set, but what you don't have is the babe Christ in the manger. The manger's empty. And what my son and our family tradition was, every day of Advent, he got to move figures, the shepherds and the magi closer. And of course, the shepherds had to be ahead of the magi because the magi don't make it on Christmas morn, they make it later. But that was. It gave a sense of expectation and the drawing close of the great feast. And so that was a fun thing for kids to get ready for. Well, here's a question. If you could recommend one book of the Bible to read during Advent to prepare for Christmas, what would it be? So what's your one book?
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Unknown Speaker
James?
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Dr. Jim Prothero
All right, thank you. James Prothero. That's his go to book, by the way.
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Unknown Speaker
No, it's just. It's a call to conversion throughout. It's a short book, so you can supplement it with whatever Dr. Barber is going to say. But it also ends that the ending of James really is all about, what do we wait while. How do we live while we're waiting for the Lord's return? Wait like a patient farmer waits for the rains. Pray like Elijah, be patient like Job and go to confession. Right. Where he talks about the sacrament of confession in the end of the book of James. So these are quite perfect. They're not as Christmassy, but I feel like I've got to be on message here.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah, no, that's consistent. I'm impressed. Made a good case. Which one would you.
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Dr. Michael Barber
I'm going to just be obvious and say the Gospel of Luke, because the Gospel of Luke is where we find the account of Jesus birth. And it's really important, I think, to read the whole gospel. If you read the whole gospel, you'll see how elements in the first two chapters that we focus on during the Christmas season relate to the entire message of the gospel. So the more you know that gospel, the better you're going to see the significance of details in the first two chapters.
- [25:03]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Those are two great books you can't miss with either one of those. And my guess would be the prophet Isaiah, which is the fifth gospel, because we're going to hear a lot of Isaiah throughout the Advent season and expectation of the coming. And so if you Want an Old Testament book? That's my contribution. We'll plug in Isaiah. Here's a question. I've had a long standing debate in my family, so we can help do some family counseling here. A long standing debate in my family. Does Christmas season end on epiphany or on the Feast of Presentation? And of course, the Feast of presentation is typically 40 days after Christmas because Jesus is going to be presented after his birth 40 days later, and so typically February 2nd. So you have this idea of 40 days later. Is that the end of the Christmas season, what was known as the Candle Mass in the tradition? Or is it as this questioner says, or is it epiphany? So what would be your answer?
- [26:05]
Dr. Michael Barber
I've got a definite opinion on this one.
- [26:08]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Good, good. We're going to see. I do, too. So we'll see. Because we have a debate in my house and so I'm going to give my half of the answer. My wife has a different version, but good.
- [26:16]
Dr. Michael Barber
Well, I think we need to distinguish two terms. And this is part of the problem, is there's a difference between the Christmas season and the Christmas cycle, right? So technically, the church's liturgical season of Christmas comes to an end at epiphany. So that's very clear. However, the church does recognize that there's a broader cycle that goes beyond that. And we look towards Candle Mass or the Feast of the Presentation, we look at that feast as part of the cycle of Christmas. So I think people often, you know, want to adopt the liturgical seasons of the church in their own house and say, okay, well, now we put up the decoration. We don't put up any Christmas decorations until Christmas season. Okay. But the church also recognizes that there are these cycles that are appropriate in the lectionary as well. And so I think if you want to extend your decorations beyond epiphany and recognize that the church is still in the cycle of Christmas, I don't think that there's a major problem with that, but I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are.
- [27:24]
Dr. Jim Prothero
I think it's important to make that distinction between the Christmas in terms of Christmas decorations and the practical application and the Christmas liturgical season. So, yes, I think both in the extraordinary form of liturgy before 1962 and then after 1962 with the new liturgical norms. It mentions clearly that you have. Well, first off, you have the octave of Christmas. There's several little things here that you can get into shades of meaning. You have the eight days of Christmas. Christmas is an octave, just as we have the Easter octave. Because it's such a high, great feast for all eight days. Each of those days are considered a solemnity of Christmas, an extension of Christmas of that great feast of Christmas. And then you have the 12 days of Christmas which ends with Epiphany. So from December 25 to January 6, you have the Feast of Epiphany. Typically, now, epiphany is celebrated on a Sunday. So you move that to a Sunday, and then you have. And I think you're right, that Christmas goes from Christmas Day, the 25th, through Epiphany. Now, epiphany, you have Sunday of Epiphany, but then you have that following week which also follows epiphany. And then you can see the change liturgically with the baptism of Christ that follows that following Sunday of the observation of Epiphany. And with the baptism of Jesus, we get the beginning of ordinary time. You'll see the priest's vestments are going to be green for ordinary time, whereas the days before that it was white. And white is the color for the season of Christmas. And so you can see that if you want to teach this with kids and you want to do this in the family, you can see dramatically the white to the green, which gives you the official, official Christmas season. Now, it is true that the presentation of our lord is celebrated 40 days later. And you have this sense that the presentation of our Lord, of course, in its original historical setting, fit in that time period of all the things we read in the infancy narrative around Christ's birth. And so what is known as candle, mass or the presentation of Jesus is certainly connected to Christmas in a close way. And so that kind of creates some confusion for people because it's related to the infancy.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Was he baptized and now he's a child again?
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah, exactly. Because you notice the baptism came before the presentation. And so it gets a little bit wonky in that sense. But the church is following a clear path with the white, you know, white for the Christmas season, green for that. But then that one feast day is taking us back.
- [29:56]
Dr. Michael Barber
And there was actually, historically, what happened was originally, there were heretics, we know, from Clement of Alexandria, who celebrated the baptism of Jesus on the Feast of the Epiphany. But they marked that, it seemed, as Christ's birth because of their heretical views. They thought Jesus became the Son of God at his baptism. And so there was a whole issue there of how, what do we do with that feast, even though there are, in the biblical narrative feast, Jesus comes to the temple 40 days later. So it was Sort of in response to that heretical notion that they really began to emphasize the baptism of Jesus early on.
- [30:31]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah, it's fascinating. No, the whole liturgical. How the church. The whole point of all that is your point out there is how the church practices the liturgy is basically, the liturgical year is focused on the life of Jesus Christ. And so Advent, which begins liturgical year, is anticipating the birth of Christ. Then we have Christmas, this great birth of Christ. And of course, then we'll have the baptism of or the baptism of Jesus that begins Ordinary Time, and that'll prepare us for the cycle that leads up to Lent and Easter and the Paschal mystery. So we'll talk more about that in our next Bible Conference. Right. So I want to just thank you guys for joining us. It's great. I know, speaking for myself, but I know for our audience to have biblical scholars to be able to help explain and really go through some of the wording and meaning and then also take us back to the Old Testament as well as going back into the liturgies, this has been great. And thank you so much. And I just want to highlight the author that Dr. Barber kept quoting. If you want to hold up that book, if you didn't get it. But it's the. Go ahead. What's the title?
- [31:44]
Dr. Michael Barber
Oh, the book is called the True Meaning of the Birth of Jesus and the Origins of the Season. It's also available in Spanish through the Augusta Institute.
- [31:52]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah. And so that's one of the things we made available to a lot of our parishes that use a lot of our Augusta Institute materials. We have a special discount. So it's a great way to prepare for Christmas. And I just recently gave a copy to a friend. So for them to kind of get spiritually someone who's kind of coming back, they've kind of fallen away from the church practice, but they're interested in things spiritual. We had that great conversation. I said, you know, Advent is coming. This is a good spiritual book for you to read to prepare for Christmas. And my hope is they'll onboard back into the liturgical life of the church with Christmas by reading that book. And that's the hope for others. So it's a great book to give out and share. It's rich in scripture, rich in history, and mentioned some great practical things with the liturgy as well. So it's a wonderful book that Dr. Barber did. So I'm happy to give a shout out to that. So thank you all for joining us for our Augusta Institute Advent Conference, and I hope you've enjoyed it and been edified by it. And we'll close in prayer in just a moment.