19 December 2021 | IV Sunday of Advent | Menlo Park, Calif.

Friends, we've come to the last episode of 2021! Returning renewed from my five day retreat, I share one Christmas grace (among many the Lord gave me this week) and consider how poverty of spirit prepares our hearts to receive immense blessings. Also in this episode: Tolkien’s take on the heroic northern spirit in a historical-fictional play, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth,” and some of his thoughts on the beauty of language, to which he was extraordinarily sensitive. Finally, what is the Church teaching us through these four Sundays of this short season? We savor the four entrance antiphons of the Sundays of Advent as the hors d’oeuvres of the coming feast.

Links referenced in this episode:

Opening music: “Rorate caeli,” antiphon for the IV Sunday of Advent, sung by Schola Gregoriańska, Theological Seminary of the Diocese of Toruń, Poland, 2020. All rights reserved.