Homily for the4th Sunday of Advent
Dec. 18, 2011
Luke 1: 26-38
Troop 40, Seton Scout Res., Greenwich, Conn.
Herewith the written text from which I preached Saturday evening to Scouts and Scouters of Troop 40, plus a few other folks; there was also some unscripted back-and-forth as I elicited some recall of the gospel from the boys.
This text was heavily edited for delivery to the Ursulines in New Rochelle on Sunday morning.
Illustration at right: Annunciation in stained glass, St. Ursula's Church, Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
“The angel Gabriel was sent from God … to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David” (Luke 1: 26).
Our Advent season, whose name means “coming,” starts its 4th week this evening. Our gospel reading recalls how our salvation in Jesus Christ started. It starts with what is for us a very unusual happening—but not unusual in the Bible. An angel appears to someone, in this case to a young woman in the village of Nazareth in Galilee, and the angel brings to her a startling message. This message, as in all such wondrous appearances in the Bible, concerns a mission or purpose that God has for her.
The gospel passage tells us 3 things about this woman right off (1:27). 1st, she’s a virgin. 2d, she’s “betrothed to a man named Joseph,” which in 1st-century Jewish society meant that she was legally committed to a future marriage to him (unlike an engagement in modern society, which isn’t legally binding), but she and Joseph weren’t yet permitted to live together. 3d, “the virgin’s name was Mary.” We’re not told how old Mary is; we can only guess that she probably was betrothed soon after she reached maturity, according to the custom in all ancient societies, including Jewish society in the 1st century. That was true thruout the Middle Ages, as well; Shakespeare’s Juliet was only 13. So we guess Mary was 13 or 14 when she was contracted to Joseph as his future wife.
The angel Gabriel greets Mary: “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” St. Luke, writing in Greek, uses the ordinary Greek word of greeting: Χαϊρε, which literally means, “Rejoice!” but which we usually translate into English as a less dramatic “Hail!” That word serves to indicate that the Gospel, the Good News, the cause of our rejoicing, is about to be announced.
The angel calls Mary “full of grace” (1:28). An alternate translation, used in some English versions of the Bible, would be “most highly favored one.” And in another moment the angel will tell her, “You have found favor with God” (1:30). God has chosen her for the great purpose of which Gabriel is about to inform her, and because of that God has bestowed on her his great favor, his grace, his blessings. And then Gabriel confirms to her, “The Lord is with you” (1:28). God is at her side, to accompany her with his favor and his help as she carries out the mission that he’s about to give her.
Catholics will recognize in the angel’s greeting the opening lines of the Hail Mary prayer: “Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee.” It’s a familiar prayer full of scriptural allusions, and one in which we join God in recognizing Mary’s special place in the story of our salvation.
We’ll also recognize the familiar greeting that we use often at Mass: “The Lord be with you.” The Lord accompanies us, too, on our journey thru life. Our purpose, our mission, is of course much less dramatic than Mary’s. But God has chosen each one of us to be special in his eyes; he has favored us with his love. And he is with us as we go thru our lives trying to live in his love and to share it with other people.
Then the angel gets down to business: the mission for which he’s come to Nazareth to speak to Mary. “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus” (1:31). This son, Jesus, will truly be her son. He will be a complete and real human being. His name, Jesus in Greek, Yeshua in Hebrew, means “YHWH is salvation,” or “YHWH saves.” YHWH is God’s own name, the name he revealed to Moses when he appeared to Moses in the burning bush to give the Moses the mission to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt (Ex 3:4-17). Thru Moses God was about to save Israel from Egypt; and now God, thru Jesus, is about to save everyone from sin and damnation and death. Christian teaching tells us that Jesus’ victory over sin and death would be of no use to us human beings if he were not human like us.*
The angel doesn’t say all that. He does tell Mary, “He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High,” i.e. son of God, “and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (1:32-33). In our 1st reading (2 Sam 7:1-5,8-12,14,16), we heard the great promise that God made to King David almost a thousand years before Jesus was born: “The Lord reveals to you that he will establish a house for you…. Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever” (7:11,16). That promise, which is very, very important in the Scriptures, was echoed also in our responsorial psalm (89:2-5,27,29). We heard, further, at the start of the gospel reading that Joseph, Mary’s husband-to-be, is “of the house of David.” Thus Jesus will be, legally speaking, of David’s house, and when he will be raised from the dead and exalted in heaven as the universal king, to reign of all men and women forever, he will fulfill what God promised to David. As we profess every week in the Creed, “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.”
Mary’s a practical girl. She may be only 13 or 14, but she’s not naïve. Very few people in ancient societies would be. Life was too hard, too challenging, and too short for people not to know what’s what. So she asks the angel how it is that she’s to conceive this son “since I have no relations with a man” (1:34), since she’s still a virgin. Evidently she understands that Gabriel means she’s to conceive Jesus then and there.
And Gabriel gives her a mind-boggling answer how this will happen: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (1:35). The Holy Spirit will empower Mary to conceive without any other human intervention. What the angel says to Mary echoes the opening words of the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (1:1-3 RSV). The conception of Jesus, and thus the entire work of our salvation, is to be a new creation, a brand-new start for the world and for every human being, initiated by the creative power of the Holy Spirit.
The angel continues: “Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (1:35). This will be no ordinary human child. He’ll be human, truly, as we said, because Mary will really be his mother. But God, and only God, will be his father. He’ll be holy like no other human being ever was or ever could be. He’ll be divine, fully God, in fact: “true God and true man,” as we profess in the Creed. Only God can save us from sin, damnation, and death; and Jesus will be able to do that as both God and as a human being like us.
Finally, Mary gives her consent. God has revealed to her his intention, his plan for her and for the human race. But she has to agree. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord,” she says (1:38). That could also be translated as “I am the Lord’s servant” or even “I am the Lord’s slave.” I’ll do whatever God wants of me, she says. And so Jesus is conceived within her, and our redemption gets underway.
Our redemption, yours and mine, is still underway. As Mary had to say, “Yes,” to what God asked of her, so do we have to. That’s the only condition upon our being saved by what Jesus has done for us. Like Mary, we have to be the Lord’s servants and carry out whatever he asks of us to the best of our ability. When we do that, like Mary we’ll have cause for rejoicing; like Mary, we’ll be filled with God’s favor. We’ll have the life of Jesus within us, not in a physical sense like Mary, but in a spiritual sense that will still be life-giving to the people around us.
So pray, my dear Scouts and Scouters, that you may always be looking to discover what God wants of you, and that God will share with you his Holy Spirit so that you will have the courage and the strength—like Mary—to carry that out and to live in his grace. God bless you all.
* E.g., St. Leo the Great, Ep. 31, in LOH 1:321.
Our Advent season, whose name means “coming,” starts its 4th week this evening. Our gospel reading recalls how our salvation in Jesus Christ started. It starts with what is for us a very unusual happening—but not unusual in the Bible. An angel appears to someone, in this case to a young woman in the village of Nazareth in Galilee, and the angel brings to her a startling message. This message, as in all such wondrous appearances in the Bible, concerns a mission or purpose that God has for her.
The gospel passage tells us 3 things about this woman right off (1:27). 1st, she’s a virgin. 2d, she’s “betrothed to a man named Joseph,” which in 1st-century Jewish society meant that she was legally committed to a future marriage to him (unlike an engagement in modern society, which isn’t legally binding), but she and Joseph weren’t yet permitted to live together. 3d, “the virgin’s name was Mary.” We’re not told how old Mary is; we can only guess that she probably was betrothed soon after she reached maturity, according to the custom in all ancient societies, including Jewish society in the 1st century. That was true thruout the Middle Ages, as well; Shakespeare’s Juliet was only 13. So we guess Mary was 13 or 14 when she was contracted to Joseph as his future wife.
The angel Gabriel greets Mary: “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” St. Luke, writing in Greek, uses the ordinary Greek word of greeting: Χαϊρε, which literally means, “Rejoice!” but which we usually translate into English as a less dramatic “Hail!” That word serves to indicate that the Gospel, the Good News, the cause of our rejoicing, is about to be announced.
The angel calls Mary “full of grace” (1:28). An alternate translation, used in some English versions of the Bible, would be “most highly favored one.” And in another moment the angel will tell her, “You have found favor with God” (1:30). God has chosen her for the great purpose of which Gabriel is about to inform her, and because of that God has bestowed on her his great favor, his grace, his blessings. And then Gabriel confirms to her, “The Lord is with you” (1:28). God is at her side, to accompany her with his favor and his help as she carries out the mission that he’s about to give her.
Catholics will recognize in the angel’s greeting the opening lines of the Hail Mary prayer: “Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee.” It’s a familiar prayer full of scriptural allusions, and one in which we join God in recognizing Mary’s special place in the story of our salvation.
We’ll also recognize the familiar greeting that we use often at Mass: “The Lord be with you.” The Lord accompanies us, too, on our journey thru life. Our purpose, our mission, is of course much less dramatic than Mary’s. But God has chosen each one of us to be special in his eyes; he has favored us with his love. And he is with us as we go thru our lives trying to live in his love and to share it with other people.
Then the angel gets down to business: the mission for which he’s come to Nazareth to speak to Mary. “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus” (1:31). This son, Jesus, will truly be her son. He will be a complete and real human being. His name, Jesus in Greek, Yeshua in Hebrew, means “YHWH is salvation,” or “YHWH saves.” YHWH is God’s own name, the name he revealed to Moses when he appeared to Moses in the burning bush to give the Moses the mission to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt (Ex 3:4-17). Thru Moses God was about to save Israel from Egypt; and now God, thru Jesus, is about to save everyone from sin and damnation and death. Christian teaching tells us that Jesus’ victory over sin and death would be of no use to us human beings if he were not human like us.*
The angel doesn’t say all that. He does tell Mary, “He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High,” i.e. son of God, “and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (1:32-33). In our 1st reading (2 Sam 7:1-5,8-12,14,16), we heard the great promise that God made to King David almost a thousand years before Jesus was born: “The Lord reveals to you that he will establish a house for you…. Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever” (7:11,16). That promise, which is very, very important in the Scriptures, was echoed also in our responsorial psalm (89:2-5,27,29). We heard, further, at the start of the gospel reading that Joseph, Mary’s husband-to-be, is “of the house of David.” Thus Jesus will be, legally speaking, of David’s house, and when he will be raised from the dead and exalted in heaven as the universal king, to reign of all men and women forever, he will fulfill what God promised to David. As we profess every week in the Creed, “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.”
Mary’s a practical girl. She may be only 13 or 14, but she’s not naïve. Very few people in ancient societies would be. Life was too hard, too challenging, and too short for people not to know what’s what. So she asks the angel how it is that she’s to conceive this son “since I have no relations with a man” (1:34), since she’s still a virgin. Evidently she understands that Gabriel means she’s to conceive Jesus then and there.
And Gabriel gives her a mind-boggling answer how this will happen: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (1:35). The Holy Spirit will empower Mary to conceive without any other human intervention. What the angel says to Mary echoes the opening words of the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (1:1-3 RSV). The conception of Jesus, and thus the entire work of our salvation, is to be a new creation, a brand-new start for the world and for every human being, initiated by the creative power of the Holy Spirit.
The angel continues: “Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (1:35). This will be no ordinary human child. He’ll be human, truly, as we said, because Mary will really be his mother. But God, and only God, will be his father. He’ll be holy like no other human being ever was or ever could be. He’ll be divine, fully God, in fact: “true God and true man,” as we profess in the Creed. Only God can save us from sin, damnation, and death; and Jesus will be able to do that as both God and as a human being like us.
Finally, Mary gives her consent. God has revealed to her his intention, his plan for her and for the human race. But she has to agree. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord,” she says (1:38). That could also be translated as “I am the Lord’s servant” or even “I am the Lord’s slave.” I’ll do whatever God wants of me, she says. And so Jesus is conceived within her, and our redemption gets underway.
Our redemption, yours and mine, is still underway. As Mary had to say, “Yes,” to what God asked of her, so do we have to. That’s the only condition upon our being saved by what Jesus has done for us. Like Mary, we have to be the Lord’s servants and carry out whatever he asks of us to the best of our ability. When we do that, like Mary we’ll have cause for rejoicing; like Mary, we’ll be filled with God’s favor. We’ll have the life of Jesus within us, not in a physical sense like Mary, but in a spiritual sense that will still be life-giving to the people around us.
So pray, my dear Scouts and Scouters, that you may always be looking to discover what God wants of you, and that God will share with you his Holy Spirit so that you will have the courage and the strength—like Mary—to carry that out and to live in his grace. God bless you all.
* E.g., St. Leo the Great, Ep. 31, in LOH 1:321.
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