Archbishop Lori’s Advent Message – 2025

En español

November 30, 2025

My Dear Friends in Christ,

There’s an old saying that goes like this: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” All of us need a roadmap to guide us through this life into the next. One of those roadmaps is the Church’s liturgical year, its annual cycle, its calendar of liturgical celebrations.

Advent marks the beginning of a new liturgical year. It’s a good moment for us to look at the roadmap Church gives us. On the first Sunday of Advent, we notice some things right away. We notice that the priest is wearing purple vestments instead of green. The readings are all about Jesus’ second coming at the end of time, and as we get closer to Christmas, they focus our attention on Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago. We might think of the change of liturgical seasons the way we think of the transition from fall to winter and from winter to spring. And there’s something to that. The Church’s liturgical year moves with the seasons of the year. But there’s more to it than a celebration of nature.

With Advent, we begin to celebrate yet again the mysteries of the life of Christ: his birth, his miracles and teachings, his death and resurrection, his exaltation at God’s right hand, and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. And why is it that we go through this annual cycle of celebrations? The simple answer is to deepen our faith, our hope, and our love in Christ. Each year as we prepare for Christmas, our hearts should yearn all the more for him. As we celebrate the birth of Christ each year, Christ should be born in us anew and shine forth in us, more and more clearly.

Each year as we recall Jesus’ life and teaching, we should find ourselves more and more deeply rooted in the Word of God, not merely hearing his Word but putting it into practice. Our yearly celebration of Christ’s suffering and death should enable us more and more completely to die to sin and to all forms of selfishness, and each year at Easter, as we encounter the Risen Lord, we should rise above our human frailty, sharing more deeply in Christ’s grace and glory. When the annual festival of Pentecost comes around, our hearts should be ever more widely open to the Holy Spirit.

So let us set out anew on our journey of faith, a journey that takes us through all the stages and mysteries of the life of Christ. During this new liturgical year, let us resolve that as individuals and as a Church community that we will share more deeply in Christ’s love for us, that we will grow in the likeness of Christ, and that we will be the Lord’s witnesses and missionaries in the world.

May the Lord bless you at Advent and at Christmas and throughout the sacred year of faith.

Faithfully in Christ,

Most Reverend William E. Lori
Archbishop of Baltimore