+BEHOLD, I AM THE HANDMAID OF THE LORD 4th
Sunday B-Advent
These words of Mary, her surrender to the divine in her life, we’ve just
heard reveal something at heart of this Advent and Christmas season. What took
place in Mary’s womb is to take place in the heart of each and all of us, for
the Christ conceived in us at the moment of Baptism comes to full maturity as we
respond daily to the grace of God at work in our lives. As Fr Louis Merton has
so beautifully expressed it: Advent means “a readiness to have eternity and time
meet not only in Christ but in us, in humanity, in our life, in our world, in
our time.”
Last week we heard from the prophet Isaiah and
then of John the Baptist. This Sunday, as we draw nearer to the feast of
Christmas, we have the figures of David and Mary. Last week we heard of the
promise of a Messiah who would heal the broken hearted, release prisoners,
announce a year of favor and then of the Baptist who was his forerunner. This
week we hear of the promise of a dynasty, of a kingdom that “shall last
forever.” King David had been freed from all his enemies, had become famous
“like the great ones of the earth” and had built himself a house of cedar. He
was then ashamed that the ark of God still dwelt in a flimsy tent and he planned
to build a royal temple, a worthy resting place for the ark of the covenant. The
prophet Nathan was at first supportive of David’s plan and then the word of the
Lord comes to him, reminding both him and David that any success they have had,
was God’s doing and not their own. Doing a play on David’s proposals, the Lord
tells Nathan that it is he who “will fix a place for his people.” It is the Lord
who “will plant them to dwell in their place without further disturbance.” It is
the Lord who “will establish a house” for David and make of his offspring a
kingdom that will endure forever. But then we know, the national kingdom begun
under David soon began to disintegrate during the reign of his son Solomon and
his offspring, completely coming apart with the exile to Babylon in 586BC.
What God really intended in the promise of a
dynasty, a kingdom that would last forever only begins to surface in a town
called Nazareth when the angel appears to a young virgin whose name was Mary.
All of Israel’s history would come to be understood among Christians in the
light of a youthful woman’s response to a messenger who called her “full of
grace.” Human initiative had completely failed but at the consent of a simple
maiden, God’s promised plan of forming a lasting kingdom is accomplished. She is
to conceive in her womb and bear a son who will be given “the throne of David
his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever.” The son is to be
conceived by no human effort or intervention but by the Holy Spirit who will
overshadow her so that the child “will be called holy, the Son of God.”
Mary is the beginning of a new Israel, the
beginning of a whole new creation. She becomes the exemplar of not only God’s
plan for the chosen people but for all of the human family. Her womb, above all
her heart, becomes the receptacle of divine life, of our humanity transformed.
Her willingness to let God to do in her all that God wills for us, is the model
of discipleship for all time, of what every Christian is called to by reason of
his or her baptism. Mary has sometimes become so exalted within Catholic
tradition we may forget she was a simple maiden in an obscure town who had to
make many of the same choices we have to day after day.
What may become obscured in the Advent / Christmas season amid the commercialism
of our age is the pure wonder of a love that moved God, the very maker of our
universe, a universe that is thought by scientists to be ever expanding, to
become incarnate in a young woman’s womb. Such a love has no limits on what it
wills for us. Such a love can never be taken back unless we reject it, seeking,
imploring even, to become ever more manifest in each one of us gathered here.
When the woman cried out to Jesus during his public ministry: “Blessed was the
womb that bore him, the breasts that gave him suck, he told her, “rather blessed
are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” Here we have the good news of
the kingdom, the real meaning of this Advent / Christmas season.
To hear the word of God as it is spoken daily
into each of our lives, often in the most ordinary and mundane of circumstances
as it did in Mary’s, is to live as the very Children of God. It is to allow the
Holy Spirit to conceive divine life in us and make of us a whole new creation.
Mary’s simple words: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord” bear the
fundamental attitude of the Christian, the willingness that allows the Christ
within us to come to maturity. As we receive the Eucharist from this altar, may
we be mindful of how the Word become flesh seeks even now to come to birth in
the whole of our lives, in every movement of our hearts.
2 Sam. 7:1-5; 8b-12; 14a 16, Romans 16:25-27, Li 1:26-38
Michael Casagram, OCSO
Abbey of Gethsemani
December 18, 2005
Return to Resources
Contact information:
Mailing Address
LCG, PO Box 503, Oxford, OH 45056
E-mail: info@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
|
