Pope Leo XIV on Sunday highlighted four virtues of St. Joseph — “piety and charity, mercy and trust” — as guides for Catholics in the final days of Advent leading up to Christmas. Speaking during his Angelus address from the window of the Apostolic Palace on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the pope said the day’s liturgy invited the faithful to reflect on St. Joseph...

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Monsignor James A. Misko, a priest of the Diocese of Austin, Texas, as the next bishop of Tucson, Arizona.The Holy See Press Office publicized the appointment at the Vatican, and it was also publicized in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 22 by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States. Misko has been serving as vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Diocese of Austin.

On August 31, 1986, Aeromexico Flight 498 was on final approach to Los Angeles International Airport when it collided midair with a private Cessna that had drifted into restricted airspace above Cerritos, California. The impact tore both aircraft apart. All sixty-four passengers and crew aboard the DC-9 were killed. The three people in the Cessna were killed as well. Fifteen people on the ground died when the jet slammed into a quiet residential neighborhood in a massive fireball.

The underlying premise of feminism is that women are better off mimicking the behavior of men — and not good men who are devoted to their wives and family — but the selfish and promiscuous man committed to his career and his autonomy. Work and career ought to be women’s priority. Fifty years of this rhetoric has given us enough time to see the wreckage and the foolishness of the megachurch’s dogma that motherhood is nothing but slavery and drudgery.

In the medieval church, folk piety was rich in the theatrical and festive observation of Christ’s nativity. We see and hear a faint echo of it down to our own times in Christmas carols, pageants, living creches, and even quasi-religious pop entertainment like A Charlie Brown Christmas. Some tend to downplay the importance of the Christmas season in comparison to Lent and Easter in the early church, but that’s just not true...

Picture a football stadium full of 80,000 people. Research indicates that you will influence that many people during the course of your lifetime (even if you don't have your own YouTube channel). But who is in your stadium? And what does it sound like in there? Are people cheering for the ways you positively affected them? Are they booing for all the terrible things you did? Or are they silent because you were on your phone...

There is a specific virtue of running a household well. For me, discovering it was one of the great fruits of studying ancient and medieval thinking. According to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, “domestic prudence” arranges everything in one’s home life toward the true happiness of its members. This can really help us in thinking about how to celebrate Christmas. A key feature of the great virtue of prudence is how it is different from any other know-how, or practical knowledge.

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Feast date: Dec 26

Just after Christmas, the Catholic Church remembers its first martyr, and one of its first deacons, Saint Stephen. Roman Catholics celebrate his feast Dec. 26, while Eastern Catholics honor him one day later.

 

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke praises St. Stephen as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit,” who “did great wonders and signs among the people” during the earliest days of the Church.

 

Luke's history of the period also includes the moving scene of Stephen's death – witnessed by St. Paul before his conversion – at the hands of those who refused to accept Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

 

Stephen himself was a Jew who most likely came to believe in Jesus during the Lord's ministry on earth. He may have been among the 70 disciples whom Christ sent out as missionaries, who preached the coming of God's kingdom while traveling with almost no possessions.

 

This spirit of detachment from material things continued in the early Church, in which St. Luke says believers “had all things in common” and “would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

 

But such radical charity ran up against the cultural conflict between Jews and Gentiles, when a group of Greek widows felt neglected in their needs as compared to those of a Jewish background.

 

Stephen's reputation for holiness led the Apostles to choose him, along with six other men, to assist them in an official and unique way as this dispute arose. Through the sacramental power given to them by Christ, the Apostles ordained the seven men as deacons, and set them to work helping the widows.

 

As a deacon, Stephen also preached about Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Testament law and prophets. Unable to refute his message, some members of local synagogues brought him before their religious authorities, charging him with seeking to destroy their traditions.

 

Stephen responded with a discourse recorded in the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. He described Israel's resistance to God's grace in the past, and accused the present religious authorities of “opposing the Holy Spirit” and rejecting the Messiah.

 

Before he was put to death, Stephen had a vision of Christ in glory. “Look,” he told the court, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

 

The council, however, dragged the deacon away and stoned him to death.

 

“While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,’” records St. Luke in Acts 7. “Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he died.”

 

The first Christian martyrdom was overseen by a Pharisee named Saul – later Paul, and still later St. Paul – whose own experience of Christ would transform him into a believer, and later a martyr himself.

Have you heard of the custom of blessing children on Childermas, or the Feast of the Holy Innocents?