Daily Reading for December 13 • The Third Sunday of Advent

To you who are coming to baptism, Scripture says, “Bear fruits that befit repentance.” Do you want to know what fruits befit repentance? Love is a fruit of the Spirit. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. So are peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control, and the others of this sort. If we have all of these virtues, we have produced “fruits that befit repentance.” . . .

John, the last of the prophets, . . . speaks about the Gentiles, “For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” From what stones? Surely he was not pointing to irrational, material stones but to people who were uncomprehending and sometimes hard.

From Homilies on the Gospel of Luke by Origen, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament III, Luke, edited by Arthur A. Just, Jr. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003).