FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT
20 DECEMBER 2020
In
the first reading, we meet a prominent and powerful King. David has conquered his enemies. He has combined the twelve tribes of Israel
and established Jerusalem as the capital of a united nation. He has built himself a fine palace made of
cedar. He knows that his success is the
result of God’s blessing. As a prominent
and powerful king, he wants to construct a suitable temple that will house the
ark of God, symbolic of the Lord’s presence.
Initially,
the prophet Nathan agrees with him.
However, Nathan receives a message from the Lord later that night and
comes back with a surprise for the King.
Speaking for the Lord, he informs David that he will not build the
temple. Instead, the Lord will do
something much greater and much more lasting than a physical temple, which his
son Solomon would build. The Lord will
establish a house for David. The Lord
promises that his house and his kingdom will endure forever. This Covenant is depicted in the center aisle
of our church.
In the
Gospel, we meet a young teenage girl in a remote village in Galilee. Mary is neither prominent nor powerful. She is betrothed to a local carpenter from
the house of David. She certainly knows
about the Covenant made with King David and looks for that time when the
promise will be fulfilled. Like David,
Mary is surprised by a messenger sent by the Lord. The angel Gabriel informs her that God has
chosen her to play a critical role in the fulfillment of this ancient
promise. She will become the new ark of
God. The promised Messiah will be
conceived in her womb not as an ordinary human person, but as the Son of God.
Just as
David is granted much more than he could ever have imagined, the same is true
of Mary. Earlier, the angel Gabriel had
announced to Zechariah in the sacred temple in Jerusalem that he and his wife
Elizabeth would conceive a son, even though they had been barren for many
years. Zechariah was surprised and asked
for proof. The only proof offered to him
was that he was struck dumb, unable to speak.
In contrast, the humble virgin in the remote town of Nazareth asks for
instruction. “How can this be?” she
asks. Even though she could not
understand what is happening, she trusts the angel’s words that the same Spirit
who had hovered over the formless earth in the Book of Genesis would hover over
her and form the child in her womb. Even
though she had not asked for it, she receives from the angel proof anyway. Her barren cousin Elizabeth had conceived a
child in her old age. With humility,
Mary agrees to be the handmaid of the Lord.
“May it be done to me according to your word,” she says.
Both King
David and the humble virgin of Nazareth trusted that nothing will be impossible
for God. David did not live to see the
fulfillment of the promise made to him.
However, Mary continued to trust that nothing would be impossible for
God as she witnessed all that happened in her life. She kept that trust when she wrapped her
newborn son in swaddling clothes in a stable in Bethlehem. She continued to trust in her exile in
Egypt. She did not lose that trust when
she wrapped the dead body of her son in burial cloths after his execution.
We ask
Mary’s intercession to maintain that same trust in our lives. We will celebrate Christmas this year in ways
we could never have imagined. We will be
stripped away of so many traditions and customs of the season. But stripping away can also help us focus
better on the actual Mystery that we celebrate.
The consent of the humble virgin opened the way for God to become like
us in all things but sin. Through the
power of the Holy Spirit hovering over us, we can trust that our more simple
celebration of Christmas will draw us more closely into the Mystery of God
dwelling in our midst in ways that might surprise us. We can trust that nothing will be impossible
for God as we face the darkness of our world together.
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