My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, peace be with you as you strive to continue deepening your relationship with our Lord during this Advent. We have a very powerful Gospel today in the readings, and something which throws some people off. I would like to explain it in this way. What I am referring to is the verse from Matthew chapter 11, verse 12, and Luke chapter 16, verse 16, the parallel verse. And it goes like this: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”