Pope Leo XIV, at the Angelus this Fourth Sunday of Advent, spoke about Saint Joseph — about piety, charity, mercy, and abandonment to God's plan. He said these virtues educate the heart to encounter Christ and our brothers and sisters. He invited the faithful to be, for one another, a welcoming manger, a hospitable home, a sign of God's presence.
This is the fourth week of Advent. Christmas is days away.
I want to write something personal today, rather than analytical. The analysis can wait until January. December has its own demands.
What I Actually Think About This Time of Year
I have lived in many places. Freiburg, Zurich, London, Miami, Texas, Malta, back to London. Each of those places had its own relationship to Christmas, to winter, to the sacred and the secular dimensions of this season.
The most vivid memories are from Freiburg. My father Martin — who died in 2012, younger than he should have — took Advent seriously. Not ostentatiously. But the wreath was on the table from the first Sunday. The candles were lit at dinner. He read to us from the Scriptures in the weeks before Christmas, not as performance but as habit. We knew what we were waiting for and why.
I have tried to carry that forward. It is harder in a world that decided Christmas starts on November 1st and ends on Boxing Day. But it is worth the effort.
On Joseph
The Pope's meditation on Joseph struck me. Joseph is one of the figures in the Christian story who I think about more the older I get.
He received news that would have destroyed most men — his betrothed was pregnant with a child that was not his, in a society where the consequences of that were severe. His first instinct was mercy: he planned to dismiss her quietly, to protect her, rather than expose her to public shame. Before he could act, an angel came to him in a dream.
And he obeyed.
Not with visible enthusiasm. Not with a speech. Not with conditions. He woke up, and he did what he was told, and he spent the rest of his life protecting a family that was not his by biology but entirely his by love, fidelity, and presence.
There is more masculine virtue in that quiet, obedient, protective love than in a thousand motivational speeches about alpha behaviour and personal brand.
Joseph did not understand everything. He understood enough. He acted on what he knew and trusted God with the rest.
That is, in my experience, what faith actually looks like in practice. Not certainty. Not the absence of doubt. But the willingness to act faithfully without waiting for the full picture.
On the Family
I have ten children. That fact surprises people in the circles I move in — the world of international tax, emigration planning, and high-net-worth advisory. It is not a world that puts large families at the centre of its value system.
But I do.
The family is the first and most irreducible unit of human community. Not the state, not the market, not the corporation — the family. It precedes all of these and gives all of them their meaning. A man who has built a business but lost his family has built something on sand. A man who has built his family well has built something that will outlast him.
Advent is the season that reminds me of this. The story at the centre of it — a young woman, a carpenter, a long journey, a stable, a child born into poverty and obscurity who changed the world — is not a story about power or wealth or geopolitical influence. It is a story about a family.
For Those Who Find This Season Difficult
I want to say a word to those for whom this time of year is hard.
The commercial culture of Christmas amplifies loneliness, because it holds up an image of warm, complete, joyful family life and reminds those who do not have it of what they lack. I have been through divorce. I know what it is to carry that weight through December.
The Church's Advent is more honest about this than the commercial version. It does not promise happiness. It promises presence — God's presence, in the mess and difficulty and incompleteness of actual human life. The manger was not a comfortable place. The stable was cold. The circumstances were frightening. And God showed up anyway.
That is the promise worth holding onto, in December or any other month.
A blessed end to Advent to all who are observing it.
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