Tom and Barb Webber, members of Our Lady of Lourdes, Milwaukee, have released an album of Advent and Christmas songs they’ve written over the years for their parish. (Submitted photo)

A married pair of musicians have always lived their Catholic faith, often subtly sharing it through their mostly secular music.

Now, Barb and Tom Webber have released an outward expression of faith through new Advent and Christmas music titled “Humble Night.”

They will share that music in concert at 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 14, at St. Pius X Parish, Wauwatosa. They also performed music from the album at their parish, Our Lady of Lourdes, Milwaukee, earlier this month.

“It’s a coming together, a holistic package of who we are,” said Barb. “Your life is segregated. You have music, work, spirituality — and your spirituality flows through everything you do. But this truly is a time where our spirituality and music are coming together in a very obvious way. This is an embodiment of our journey as Catholics and as songwriters.”

Tom said that their Catholic faith has always been the hub from which their music — including through their American folk group, Fair Webber — reaches out to people as a ministry, even if it’s not delivered through highly obvious lyrics.

“In our work previously, even while we’ve every once in a while had a song or two that were overtly religious, almost all of our songs are (written) parabolically, meaning a reference to the parables where you have ordinary kinds of situations and people,” Tom said. “They are not obvious vehicles of the divine, but they unfold and unveil the divine within them.”

Tom and Barb said that the music for the 10-song album has come over a 12-year period, when they had been asked to create original Christmas music for Our Lady of Lourdes. They said they received deeply moving feedback about the songs and how they resonated within peoples’ hearts.

“People would say, ‘Boy, that really touched me,’” Barb said. “A lyric like, ‘Have you found him yet? You’ve been looking for so long, but he’s always been there in the manger of your heart.’ When those kinds of things resonate with people, you listen. Now what’s next? Do I need to put these out for other people to hear?”

They have done exactly that — just the latest in a decades-long musical vocation that has surrounded her calling as a nurse and his calling in ministry to youth. They met at St. Matthias, Milwaukee, when Barb volunteered as a catechist for Tom’s Christian formation program.

A slow introduction for Barb to singing harmony and songwriting led to what Barb calls a “canon” of songs, and the current batch takes Barb’s lyrics and funnels them through Tom’s theological background. He holds a master’s degree from Saint Francis de Sales Seminary and taught theology for many years at St. Thomas More High School, Milwaukee.

This grouping of Advent and Christmas music comes from themes from Catholic seasonal readings.

“We are trying to take the Advent readings from the Hebrew scriptures and the infancy narratives and trying to look at the Incarnation not as some kind of past event, but something that is continuing to unfold right now in the lives of people,” Tom said. “We tried to contemporize the themes of Advent and of Christmas in a way that connects with the realities of today’s world.”

Barb succinctly drills down the musical mission that she and Tom share in this album, and in their vocation, to what they see as the most important of basic truths.

“Love is the basis, basis of everything,” Barb says. “God is love, and love is in the music.”