Over at the splendid and still relatively new website Catholic Moral Theology, Tobias Winright has a beautiful reflection on the readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. He reminds us that an awareness of justice was a part of the Christian Gospel even before the birth of Christ. This year marks the anniversary of the 1971 document by the Synod of Bishops, "Justice in the World" which stated, "Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constituitive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation." The synodal fathers were, as Winright reminds us, picking up where the Virgin Mary left off.