Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Intention: That all people will embrace the story of the birth of the Christ Child as a time to increase our attention to the needs of children throughout the world.
Today’s Gospel | Luke 1:39-47
Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
And Mary said: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
Reflection for the Second Saturday of Advent
The account of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth is one of the happiest narratives in scripture. There are few stories that better capture the pure excitement of being able to share good news with another. These two women, related by blood and now united in chosenness, find in each other’s presence a special affirmation and empowerment of their very selves. This story bears powerful witness to the wonder of God’s transforming love. It also says much to us about the role of relationships in human redemption.
One of the unhappy effects of our society’s increasing idolization of the sovereign individual is the privatization of the meaning of human fulfillment. We order our lives around a worldview that considers community at best an option of convenience, and at worst a conspiratorial imposition on freedom. In an era of panicked obsession with the threat of what “they” are doing, we may want to consider that the real problem is not what “they” are doing, but that we know them only as “they”. We make of them strangers, and then mistrust them for being so. This is an egotism that not only perverts all of our identities, but also cripples our ability to recognize our inexorable need for one another.
Because we are created by one God to be one people in him, salvation is by its very nature collective and uniting. It cannot be experienced in isolation, nor can it be appropriated into one’s proprietary commodity. To be redeemed is to be in right relationship with the total creation that completes us. God’s flame in each of our hearts is meant to be part of the light that is all of us, but it can do this only if we make the journeys to traverse the distances between us and become unknown and unknowable to one another no longer. Simply, we must stop waiting for God’s Kingdom. God’s Kingdom is now waiting for us.
Author Marilynne Robinson insists in The Givenness of Things, “To value one another is our greatest safety, and to indulge in fear and contempt is our gravest error.” The gift of redemption reveals itself to us through our relationships, and becomes alive through the acceptance, the healing, and the wholeness that we give and receive with one another. And so, it is good to, like Mary and Elizabeth, make Advent a time for visitation, for sharing our presence and our good news with these we love, with those who love us, and especially with those that we now realize we must learn to love.
Prayer
Eternal Father, as we prepare during this Advent to celebrate the gift of our Lord, we remember how your gift came to us. Through the faith and selflessness of our Blessed Mother, you gave us your Son, who teaches us how to live lives of faith, mercy, and justice, with peace in our hearts and with goodwill to all. Because of Mary’s gift of herself, you were able to give yourself to our world. Help us to hold in ourselves those same virtues of trust in you and openness to your will. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.