Homily Text … The Gospel
Luke 1:26-38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was
sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man
whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And
he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But
she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this
might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found
favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you
will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most
High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He
will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no
end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel
said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will
be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also
conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.
For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the
servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel
departed from her.
This Gospel always reminds me
of the “story” of a Protestant who died and went to heaven. Upon his arrival, Jesus greeted the man,
presented him to God the Father with the words, “I know you have met my
father,” then turning slightly, said, “but I don’t think you have met my
mother.”
The final word of Advent
points to the Blessed Mother, Mary. Of
all that divides Christians, there is perhaps no greater point of division that
separates Christians. Oh, how well I
know this! I grew up in a very
Protestant family in which to be called a “Catholic” was like being cursed at
with an appalling, even offensive, degree of vulgarity. At the heart of this was
the belief that “those Catholics worship Mary.”
As an Anglican, I know better
now than I did then. We who identify as
Catholic don’t worship Mary. We honor
her. This Gospel contains the very reason
we honor this woman.
In these days of Advent, as we
prepare to greet Christ at his second coming, we have heard weekly the prophets
who foretold the first coming of Messiah.
In today’s Gospel, the message of the prophets reaches the beginning of
fulfillment when the Archangel Gabriel pays a visit to Mary. In this visit, and Mary’s embrace of the
angelic message, she becomes the mother of Messiah. This is the Gospel not only for this day. It is the Annunciation Gospel, the feast kept
on the 25th day of March, 9 months prior to the Feast of the
Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We honor Mary because she
embraced the will of God in this moment.
And how incredible it is that she embraced the will of God. There are plenty of reasons why Mary could
have chosen not to accept the message.
Mary, we are told, was probably about 14 at this moment. In addition to her youth, we are told that
she had little that made her worthy of such an honor. If we read on in the first chapter of Luke,
we will find Mary list a whole litany of things in her song of praise while in
the home of her cousin Elizabeth that could easily have made her respond with
doubt to the angel’s message. And yet
despite all this, Mary did not doubt, but believed, and embraced the message, pondering
it in her heart.
This embrace is even more
amazing when we read on in this first chapter of Luke and encounter the priest Zechariah,
husband of Elizabeth. Like Mary, he too
received a visit and a message from the Archangel Gabriel. Unlike Mary, his first response was to
question how this could be. And we
should note that the message he received should have been more believable that
that given to Mary. Zechariah was told
that his barren wife would give birth to a child. This priest surely would have known well the
stories of Sarah, Hannah and other barren women in the Scriptures whose wombs
were opened by God who made them mothers in such a way that no other
explanation could be given than that this was the work of God.
But the point of this, my
friends, is not merely that we would honor Mary for her amazing faith and her
willingness to embrace the will of God and ponder the Message of God in her
heart. We honor Mary chiefly as an act
of faith through which we are inspired to go and do likewise.
We likely have not received
such a grand visitation, but make no mistake about the fact that we have all
been given a message and a mission in our own day and generation from God. In these Advent days, we have been reminded
that we are to prepare both ourselves and the world around us for the coming
Christ. We have been called to embrace
the truth that the best is yet to come, that the suffering of the world and all
that seeks to distract us from God will someday pass away and be no more. And as we hear these Gospel promises, we need
to remember that for many in the world around us, these promises of eternal
life free from suffering, sin and death seem to be a fairytale that is as
foolish as the thought that a virgin would conceive and give birth to a human
child who is both fully God and fully human.
Truly there are those in the
world who think we are as foolish as Mary, maybe even more so than her. Mindful of this, are we bold enough to
embrace the wisdom of God that often appears to the world to be
foolishness? Are we courageous enough to
step out in faith, pondering the ways of God in our hearts and believing that
the promises of God will not fail, even if we have no idea how these things can
happen? The Blessed Mother’s witness
should inspire us to embrace the Word of God and the promise of our salvation
with her affirmation of faith:
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word.”
It might seem difficult, even
impossible, to embrace the will of God in our lives as did the Blessed
Mother. And the truth that we need to
accept is that this will always be difficult for us as it was for Mary. Today we look at the Annunciation and the
Visitation to Elizabeth. But remember
when we honor Mary and seek inspiration from her living the faith and trusting
in God that we look far beyond these moments.
The Gospels present Mary always as one who ponders deeply in her heart
what she sees with her eyes and her soul.
We find her reflecting in this way as the shepherds adore her newborn
son, as the Wise Men give gifts to the child, as her son sits with the teachers
of the Law in the Temple when he is 12, as her son ministers to the
multitudes. We find Mary at the foot of
the cross. We find her among the
witnesses of the Resurrection and Ascension, among those who wait for the
descent of the Holy Spirit. We find her
as the mother of the apostles whose presence always points others away from
herself to Jesus.
Mary could be present at all
these moments and ponder all these things because she knew in her heart that
God gave her the strength for such moments as these. And the wonder of our faith is that God has
not done this for the Blessed Mother alone.
God gives us the strength to embrace with faith what the world calls
foolishness, to ponder the work of God, believing that God never fails us. Today, as we honor the Blessed Mother, and as
we continue to prepare our hearts and those around us to greet Christ with joy,
let us point others to Christ and keep our focus on him. And when we are so focused on Christ, we too
will be able to embrace God always, accepting the will of God and moving
forward by faith until that day when we shall believe no longer by faith but
with sight restored and perfected by him who has trampled down death by death
and who bestows upon us his own eternal life.
Father Timothy
Alleman
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