Welcome everyone to our Advent Bible conference here at the Augustin Institute.

My name is Dr. Brant Petrie.

I am a professor of sacred scripture here at the Augustine Institute, and I'm very happy to be with you to share this presentation, which is entitled, The Birth of the Messiah,

Mary and the Mystery of Christmas.

So I just want to dive in with two points that we're all familiar with.

The first thing I want to start by saying is that every Sunday at Mass,

we as Catholics profess the creed. We say the Nicene Creed, right? And we say that we not only believe

in one Lord Jesus Christ, but that we also profess that for us men and of our salvation, he came down

from heaven and by the power of the Holy Spirit,

was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.

And you may have noticed at that point when we say the creed, we actually bow, we're supposed to bow,

in honor of the mystery of the incarnation, of the mystery of Jesus becoming incarnate of the Virgin Mary.

The second point I'd like to begin with is calling to mind the fact that not only every week in the

creed does the church point us to the mystery of Mary's virginal motherhood? But every year at Christmas

time, we celebrate the birth of Christ with lots of hymns. One of my favorites in particular is

Silent Night. And that famous hymn, Silent Night, focuses on, again, the Virgin Mary. You have the famous line night silent night

holy night all is calm all is bright around the Virgin mother and her child right

so the question that I want to open this presentation with is it's a simple one

it might even seem an obvious one or not one

worth asking for people who have, you know, maybe grown up Christian or cradle Catholic.

But why the virgin birth? Why does the virginal conception and birth of Christ matter?

What light does the virginity of Mary shed on the mystery of Christmas?

...