Jonathan Roumie and Matt Maher will give perfect start to Advent!
With music, Scripture, storytelling, and a 240-voice choir, the Catholic performers invite audiences to begin Advent a little differently.
2 months ago
Jonathan Roumie and contemporary Christian musician Matt Maher are slated to launch the Advent season together, promising a “perfect start” to the liturgical period. 1
The announcement highlights a collaborative effort between the actor known for portraying Saint Peter in The Chosen and the Grammy‑nominated worship leader. Both will lead worship and reflections as Advent begins.
The pairing is positioned to set a tone of reverence and celebration for the weeks leading up to Christmas, aligning with traditional Advent themes of hope, peace, joy, and love.
Assess Catholic Advent liturgy’s theological foundations
Catholic Advent liturgy is not primarily a “countdown to Christmas,” but a theologically structured season in which the Church makes present the whole mystery of Christ—his coming in the Incarnation, his hidden/intermediate coming in believers and the liturgy, and his final coming in glory—so that Christians may be formed in hope, vigilance, conversion, and worship.
At the deepest level, Advent is anchored in the reality that God is not distant but the God-who-comes. In the opening liturgical proclamation, the Church does not say “God has come” or “God will come,” but “God comes,” i.e., a continuous present action in which God visits and saves.
This “coming” has a double sense:
“The season prepares us for his coming in the graces of the Christmas feast and his coming in judgment at the end of time.”
And, in fact, it includes more than two layers:
A core Catholic principle is that liturgy does not merely commemorate past events; it re-reads and re-lives salvation history in the Church’s “today.” The Catechism teaches that the Church “especially during Advent and Lent and above all at the Easter Vigil, re-reads and re-lives the great events of salvation history in the ‘today’ of her liturgy.”
Likewise, the Church’s Advent liturgy:
This is why Advent’s theology is Christological and ecclesial at once: the season forms believers by immersing them in Christ’s mystery, and it shapes the Church’s life as she prepares to receive and proclaim him.
Historically and structurally, Advent developed with different emphases (Rome’s ancient practice and later convergence), but the Church’s liturgical theology has a unified aim. The liturgical tradition recognizes Advent as both:
A key interpretive correction is offered in the liturgical-theology handbook:
“Advent has a twofold character: as a season to prepare for Christmas when Christ’s first coming to us is remembered, as a season when that remembrance directs the mind and hearts to await Christ’s Second Coming at the end of time.”
Importantly, Advent is not simply a penitential season aimed mainly at dread. The same source clarifies:
This interpretive framework helps resolve a common confusion: Advent includes judgment-language, but the season’s theological “main line” is that the Incarnation is the ground of Christian hope, and the final coming is the completion of what the Incarnation has begun.
The Church explicitly instructs that Advent Scripture should be preached with its double sense in view. The Homiletic Directory states:
But it also warns that even when one coming dominates a passage, the text often supplies imagery for both comings at once, and the homilist must “expound with this double sense in mind.”
That is a theological demand: Advent is not a series of disconnected texts—it is a unified formation in how Christ’s mystery is to be read across time.
Advent’s theological foundations include a distinct spiritual psychology: the season reawakens the attitude of hope. Pope Benedict XVI emphasizes that Advent is “par excellence, the season of hope,” rekindling both the expectation of Christ’s birth and the expectation of his final coming.
He also grounds hope not in vague optimism but in the historical and surpassing event of Jesus Christ:
Pope John Paul II similarly presents the liturgy of Advent as “constant allusions to the joyful expectation of the Messiah,” and insists Advent is not merely historical remembrance:
“Instead, we must understand that our whole life should be an ‘advent’, in vigilant expectation of Christ’s final coming.”
In other words, Advent is theological training: it orders life itself toward Christ—especially toward recognizing Christ’s presence in daily events and toward preparing to welcome him as judge.
Catholic Advent theology includes conversion, but conversion is framed within hope and grace rather than fear.
The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy describes Advent as:
This ties Advent’s moral dimension to its sacramental and eschatological dimension: conversion is the reshaping of the heart so that the coming God may find the soul ready.
Advent is also theologically eucharistic in its pedagogy. The Homiletic Directory notes that Advent’s “coming” is encountered in the liturgy because “Christ is truly present” in the Eucharistic assembly.
And the Roman Missal’s Advent prayers repeatedly make petition around vigilance, readiness, and the right moral-spiritual posture for Christ’s visitation:
“Keep us alert… as we await the advent of Christ your Son, so that, when he comes and knocks, he may find us watchful in prayer and exultant in his praise.”
This is liturgical theology in action: the season forms how Catholics participate, pray, and live in relation to Christ who comes in Word and sacrament.
Catholic Advent’s theological foundations also extend to how the Church harmonizes popular expressions with liturgy. The Directory explains the Advent wreath as:
“a recollection of the various stages of salvation history prior to Christ’s coming” and a symbol of “prophetic light gradually illuminating the long night prior to the rising of the Sun of justice.”
So even simple domestic customs are meant (when authentically aligned) to echo the season’s theology: God’s coming is the light that breaks into history, and the family participates in that formation.
Catholic Advent liturgy rests on a coherent theological architecture: God’s “coming” (continuous visit and salvation), Christ’s two visible comings with an intermediate hidden coming, the making-present of salvation history in the Church’s “today,” and the formation of believers in hope, vigilant prayer, and conversion—all culminating in worship of the God-who-comes in the liturgical assembly and Eucharist.