BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: The mysterious fourth Christmas story of heaven battling evil

There are three well-known accounts of Christmas in the New Testament. We have St. John’s austerely metaphysical version ("The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."). And we have the more narratively dense tellings in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unique to Matthew is the reference to the Bethlehem star, the massacre of the innocents, and the visit of the Magi. And peculiar to Luke are mentions of the census, the stable, the swaddling clothes, the shepherds and the angels. Most of us, when we imagine or depict Christmas...