Sunday the 22nd of December 2024 - Fourth Sunday of Advent

Micah 5:2-5a/ Ps 80(79)/ Hebrews 10:5-10/ Luke 1:39-45

Today we light the fourth purple candle on the Advent wreath. Called the Angel’s Candle it symbolises peace remanding us of the message of the angels at Christmas, “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.”

When we visit friends and relations we must travel. We could walk, cycle, take a bus or drive ourselves. Travelling a little further we might have to use ferries, trains, or a combination of modes of transport. Travel, although it can have its frustrations, is relatively easy for us these days. Thinking about walking, what would we consider to be within walking distance? A few hundred metres maybe or a couple of miles at most. We walk at about three to four miles per hour meaning that in eight hours we could cover twenty-four to thirty-two miles.

In the gospel today we hear about Mary travelling to visit her relative Elizabeth. The journey would have been on foot from Nazareth to a hill country town which tradition has as Ain Karim meaning that it would have been about a hundred miles. A hundred miles of rough terrain not smooth roads or pathways, and this for a young pregnant woman.

What are we to make of this meeting? It represents the old covenant between God and his people giving way to the new covenant established by Jesus. Elizabeth, Zechariah, and their child, John, give way to Mary, Joseph, and their child, Jesus. The old order recognised that it was subordinate and inferior to the new order. At the meeting of the two pregnant women, the child John, leaped in his mother’s womb at the presence of Jesus in his mother’s womb. This has something to say about the humanity present in the unborn child, the sacredness of unborn human life. The woman has a special partnership with God in the act of ongoing creation.

The mother’s womb is the place where nurture begins and should be the safest place for a child to begin life. The creative act that produces human life should not be entered into lightly by those involved and if the result is the creation of a human life that life is sacred and is formed in the image and likeness of God, the destruction of which is a grave matter.

The greeting of Mary by Elizabeth, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb’ has been added to the greeting of Mary by the angel Gabrial, to form the first part of the prayer ‘Hail Mary’ so loved and cherished by Christians down the ages. By reciting this prayer we remind ourselves of who Jesus is and how Mary became a partner with God in achieving our salvation. Mary is full of the grace of God because in the absence of original sin, as proclaimed in the teaching of her Immaculate Conception, there is no sin in her soul allowing only room for God’s grace. Mary is indeed blessed among women and Jesus, the fruit of her womb, is most blessed. Referring to Mary as ‘Mother of God’ is an awesome claim but is the truth because God the Son, became fully human through his conception in the womb of one of his created people. As the Marion Anthem Alma Redemptoris Mater proclaims, ‘Mother of him who thee from nothing made’. It is Mary, who is without sin and as close to her son as it is possible to be, that we invoke to pray for us now and at that approaching hour of our death confident that Jesus hears the prayer of his mother.

As our celebration of Christmas draws near we can take time out today to step away from all the hustle and bustle around us to consider the reality of what it is we are preparing for. Celebrity is big business these days with people being acclaimed as celebrities for the most tenuous of reasons. Humanity often seeks fame and notoriety and is quick to offer homage to it. Jesus, God the Son, came into his own creation in a very different way being born, as the first reading today points out, in a rather obscure little town with no claim to fame. His mother Mary seeks no acclaim but travels a long distance to assist an older relative. The placing of the child image in our crib scene reminds us of the poverty into which our Lord and Saviour chose to enter our lives.

Jesus comes to us as our Lord and Saviour through his obedience to God the Father. Humanity is badly damaged by the ‘no’ to God represented by Adam in the first book of the Bible, a ‘no’ that can still clearly be heard around the world today and can even be heard within our own hearts. The damage that ‘no’ does to us and our relationship with each other and God is completely overcome by the ‘yes’ of Jesus, who became fully human, to exercise his total obedience to God as a human being. It was the willingness of Jesus to respond positively to God’s plan, whatever the cost, that opens up the opportunity for our redemption.

In Jesus we have the example of how we also can respond in a positive way to God. There are many ways in our lives that we can say ‘yes’ to God rather than ‘no’. Some may be more costly and difficult than others but at every turn we must try, as Jesus and Mary did, to say ‘yes’ to God, to seek always to do the will of God.

God Bless Brendan.