Fourth Sunday of Advent

This lovely season of the year is made for stories: stories that move the heart and help us know what we are waiting for this Christmas.  The stories of the Bible that we have been hearing this Advent are wondrous stories, but the principal characters in them never lose their humanity.  They are in many ways like us: wondering, anticipating, fearful, hoping.

Franciscan Richard Rohr says, “We still think of ourselves as mere humans trying desperately to become ‘spiritual,’ when the Christian revelation was precisely that we are already spiritual and our difficult but necessary task is to learn how to become human.”  In short, Rohr reminds us that we are all spiritual – we all have this indwelling of God – and Christ became incarnate, became full human, in order to show us how to be human to ourselves and to others.

The great prophet who leaped in his mother’s womb in the presence of Jesus is human, like us.  Jesus called John the greatest of all the prophets, but even John wasn’t perfect in his vision of God and the world.  He was human like us.  There is Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, who says nothing in today’s story.  That’s because he was struck dumb when he found it hard to accept the angel’s message that his elderly, barren wife would soon conceive.

Next is Elizabeth.  She was barren for so many years, you would have thought that hope was no longer in her vocabulary.  In those days an old woman who became pregnant was the topic of gossip in the small village.  Despite the embarrassment, the many years of trying to conceive, new life dances within her and she boldly proclaims that Mary is blessed and the mother of her Lord.

And our last great Advent figure: Mary.  She is a young pregnant girl of fifteen or sixteen who leaves familiar surroundings and heads toward Judah with haste for an intimate sense of communion with her elderly cousin.  Mary pregnant is not a confident, self-assured, triumphant queen of heaven.  She is probably confused when Gabriel leaves her without a script for the future, not knowing quite what to do next, even how to tell Joseph.

Thus is God among us.  If you want to find God, seek him in humility, seek him in poverty, seek him where he is hidden: in the neediest, in the sick, in the hungry, in the imprisoned.  What will Jesus say?  I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was sick, I was in prison and you came to me. We are all in need.  We are all in need of hearing the Lord’s word.   And the word is in the ordinary things of life. 

God asked of Mary only this, “Trust me.”  And she did.  Totally.  That is why Luke sees in Mary a perfect disciple.  Jesus would make that clear later on: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”  Mary listened and Mary did it.  Little wonder that in Christian tradition Mary has long been seen as the “woman of faith.”  Whatever you want, dear Lord.

Mary’s extraordinary mission in life was lived by ordinary action for others.  She said yes to God, without reservation.  We are not called to be God, not called to be angels, not even called to be saints.  We are called to be human, fully human and to hold on to the message of the angel to Mary: “Nothing is impossible with God.”

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor