TEXT: Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 21, 2025
December 21, 2025 Father De Celles Homily
Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 21, 2025
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
Today, just three days remain before the celebration of Christmas begins.
It’s a celebration we mark spiritually by recalling
the events of that wondrous night when the world was changed forever.
We place ourselves in the presence of the stable and the manger.
We have pictures all around us of the star shining over Bethlehem,
the shepherds, the herds of sheep and the choirs of angels.
But in order to prepare ourselves in these last few days,
one thing remains left to do, and today’s Gospel does it.
We need to place ourselves in the presence of the two people
who understand what it means to prepare for the birth of Jesus
better than anyone. As St. Matthew recounts today,
“Mary was betrothed to Joseph.”
Not much is known about the life of the Blessed Mother.
Scripture is silent about both her childhood and her life after Pentecost,
as are most of the early Fathers of the Church.
Even so, Scripture and all the Fathers are unanimous
in their deep reverence and love for her as
her unique grace and status in creation
is explicitly extolled from the earliest days.
Not all of the Fathers are silent about her childhood, though.
Some believed that she knew from a very early age
that God had a special mission for her in life.
Think about it.
The Church teaches infallibly that
she was conceived in the womb of her mother
without the stain of original sin.
This means she never suffered from concupiscence:
She could see very clearly the difference between
the good and evil around her,
and she never once committed a personal sin.
This is, in part, what the angel Gabriel meant when he said to her,
“Hail, full of grace!”
This was no ordinary child.
Some of the fathers held that when she was a very little girl,
Mary made a vow of virginity to God,
consecrating and dedicating her whole life to Him.
Some say that from the age of about 3 years old, she was
brought to the Temple where she was educated by the priests and scribes
until she was about 12.
Some talk about the fact that she would have had multiple experiences
of visions and inspirations from God.
In any case, between Mary’s unique holiness, her clear intellect,
and her complete love of the Lord combined with God’s unique love for her,
we can only imagine how splendidly she was prepared to be His mother.
Think of God the Son, who existed from all eternity,
and imagine how He must have looked down from heaven
with such tenderness on this young girl who He knew would one day
become His mother;
how He would provide for her and protect her;
how He would send His angels to defend her;
how He would speak to her lovingly, even before He was born,
perhaps even as He spoke to Moses and the prophets.
This is the girl, who when the angel Gabriel came to her
and told her that she would be the Mother of God Himself,
did not run and hide from her calling.
Instead, she responded, “How can this be, since I know not man?”
In other words, “I’m a virgin. What am I to do? Tell me so I can do it!”
This is something else we certainly know about this young girl:
She was a virgin—as today’s gospel tells us.
St. Luke’s gospel repeats this fact twice because
he wants no doubt that this is the woman
that the prophet’s spoke of in the Old Testament,
particularly Isaiah when he foretold,
“The virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall name him Emmanuel.”
He also wants there to be no doubt that
no mere man is the father of this child, but that God alone is His true Father.
St. Luke tells us that when the angel told her this great news,
Mary responded with complete faith and trust in God’s will,
“Let it be done to me according to your word.”
This is the woman who received her Lord in perfect faith and love.
She is the woman who held Him in her womb,
caring for and worrying about her baby as only an expectant mother could,
and waiting for Him with joy and love beyond all telling.
___
What about Joseph?
If we know little about Mary’s childhood, we know even less about Joseph’s.
We know that, like Mary, he was a direct descendant of King David,
and that he was perhaps born in Bethlehem,
but more likely, he was born in Nazareth,
where he lived and worked as a carpenter.
His relative obscurity in Scripture leads us to conclude that he was humble man,
who taught his son, Jesus, to be a humble man: to serve, not to be served.
Some of the legends about Joseph say
that he was an old man when he married Mary,
while others accept him as a young man of marrying age.
But above all, we know he was a righteous man,
which, in the language of Scripture,
means a man who was an exceptionally holy man,
always following the will of God.
And so, it shouldn’t surprise us that it is the tradition of the Fathers
and the “common teaching” of the Church that,
like Mary, he too was prepared from an early age
for his role in salvation history.
Unlike Mary, Joseph was not conceived without original sin.
Nevertheless, like Mary, he never committed a personal sin in his life.
Indeed, some even believe that Joseph was purified from Original Sin
after his conception but while he was still in his mother’s womb.
All of this because he had been chosen to stand in, on earth,
for Jesus’ Father in heaven and to be a true father to Him on earth:
to teach Jesus, insofar as He was human, how to be a man–a righteous man.
It is this Joseph who is married to the Virgin Mary.
Sometimes we hear people say, “Mary was an unwed mother.”
Of course, this directly contradicts Scripture itself.
While God would not protect her and her baby
from the sinful choices made by men,
He would do everything He could to protect her and the child
from the effects of those sins.
So, for example, when King Herod tried to have the infant killed,
God warned Joseph so he could hide his family in Egypt.
In the same way, God gave Mary a husband, from the beginning,
to protect her and His son from all harm.
And she would need that protection from the very beginning.
Today’s Gospel says,
“When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,
but before they lived together,
she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph, her husband…decided to divorce her quietly.”
See how St. Matthew calls Joseph “her husband”?
One does not have to get a “divorce” if one is not married.
The thing is, when it says they were “betrothed”,
this isn’t like our modern day “engagement”
—to the Jews, when you were betrothed you were legally married.
The only thing left to do was, as Scripture says,
“To live together,” or for the husband to “take his wife into his home.”
This is what Joseph does after the dream.
This is all to protect Mary from accusation of adultery
—and the penalty of being stoned to death.
Since everyone knew they were married,
they would assume that Joseph had already “taken her into his home.”
The only way this could fall apart was if Joseph were to publicly denounce her.
This is what most men in this situation would do, reacting in anger, even violence.
But not Joseph.
Instead, St. Matthew tells us,
“Since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame,
he decided to divorce her quietly.”
Did Joseph think Mary was guilty of adultery?
No.
Having been prepared for this moment from before his birth,
Joseph knows something wonderful is going on here.
He knows that Mary is special.
Perhaps he suspects that she is the one Isaiah spoke of,
that she is the “virgin” who would be the mother of “Emmanuel.”
And in his great humility, not knowing what God had planned,
but simply believing that he is too unworthy to be part of it,
Joseph chooses to remove himself to get out of Mary’s and God’s way.
But as soon as he knows God’s plan, he’s all in.
Scripture tells us that Joseph, immediately upon awakening from his dream,
“He did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him,
and took his wife into his home.”
___
These are the Joseph and Mary that were prepared for the birth of Christ
from the earliest days of their lives
—chosen by God to prepare a place for Jesus in the world;
to welcome Him with open and loving arms;
to serve Him, even as He was to serve them;
and to worship and adore Him, even as they corrected His childish mistakes.
These are the Mary and Joseph who traveled on the rocky mountainous roads
from Nazareth in the North of Israel to Bethlehem in the south
during the cold month of December.
These are the Mary and Joseph, dedicated to their baby and to each other,
who wandered the streets of Bethlehem
looking for a place to lay their heads;
who hastily cleaned the stable,
sweeping the floor, washing the dirty manger and laying out fresh hay;
who watched in awe the miraculous birth of God the Son;
who were filled with immeasurable joy at the coming of the Messiah.
These are the Mary and Joseph who loved our Lord
as only a new mommy and daddy can—more than we could ever begin to.
___
While the best Christmas present is always saved for Christmas morning,
most of us get a few Christmas presents in the days before Christmas.
As we make our last-minute Christmas preparations today,
let us remember to open the wonderful gifts God gives us today:
the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph.
These are gifts He gives us to help prepare for His greatest gift of Christmas—His Son.
Let us turn to them as examples and ask them,
who prepared so perfectly for the coming of their Son,
to help us to prepare, too.
And as we move into the celebration of the birth of their little baby,
let us stay close to them so that they may show us
the wonder, the awe, the joy and the love that Christmas means.