Jesus, the Lamb of God, offers Himself as a sacrifice of love on the altar of the cross. Uniting ourselves to His sacrifice in the Eucharist, we can make an offering of ourselves as a sacrifice to God.

Christ came to "save his people from their sins" (MT 1:21). In the Baptism of the Lord, He teaches us how He will accomplish that salvation. Christ descends in to our humanity and raises us up to new and everlasting life.

The Light of Christ which illumines all Israel now shines out to all the nations, represented by the three Magi. We are called to follow the star and arrive at the place they did, adoring our Lord and being totally transformed by Him.

St. Joseph teaches us the virtues of family life. He is attentive to the voice of God, even in his sleep; he promptly obeys what God reveals; he tenderly and devoutly cares for the child Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary. We seek to imitate him as we follow Christ.

God invites us to walk through Bethlehem, the "House of Bread," to see the Child born in the Manger and to feed on Christ His Son in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

The closer we come to the mystery of the Incarnation, when heaven comes down on the earth in a new and amazing way, the more we see the activity of the angels in the Scriptures and in the Liturgy. The angels teach us how to worship God, how to carry the message of the Gospel and how to fight for virtue as we enter more deeply into the salvation God won for us.

Even the natural world anticipates the coming of Christ. When God becomes man, we are also reawakened to the beauty of creation and to the God who reveals Himself to us in the Eucharist.

The Church's vision for peace entails more than the absence of war and the absence of conflict. Peace is an "active and demanding gift" (Pope Leo XIV). St. Augustine defines peace as "tranquillitas ordinis", the tranquility of order. Christ comes to bring us that peace.