Homily for the 4th Sunday of Advent

Homily for the
4th Sunday of Advent
Dec. 23, 2012
Luke 1: 39-45
St. Vincent’s Hosp., Harrison

“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb” (Luke 1: 41).

The joy of Miriam (Mary) and Elizabeth

The gospel reading this morning is the one we call “the visitation”–the Virgin Mary’s visit to her older relative Elizabeth.  Elizabeth and Mary are often called “cousins,” but St. Luke doesn’t tell us the precise relationship, only that they were relatives or kinswomen.  That, however, isn’t the point of the story.

Mary herself has just been visited by the Archangel Gabriel (1:26-38) and consented to his invitation, from God, to become the mother of the “Son of the Most High” who will “rule over the house of Jacob forever” (1:32-33).  And this conception and birth will take place without any human intervention:  “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you,” so that “the child to be born will be called the Son of God” (1:35).  Mary gives her consent:  “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word” (1:38).  And the eternal Son of God is conceived in her womb, takes from her flesh and blood, becomes her Son.  The Collect made explicit reference to all of that, using the prayer that concludes the Angelus (if any of you are familiar with that traditional prayer).

That’s where our gospel reading takes up:  “During those days,” Luke says, “Mary set out and traveled in haste” to the home of her kinfolk, Elizabeth and Zechariah (1:39-40).

These stories involve Mary as a principal character, but they’re really about her Son.  She greets Elizabeth, presumably in whatever manner 2 female relatives in 1st-century Israel would have greeted each other after not having seen each other for many months (and of course not having called each other on their cell phones or sent any text messages).  Immediately, as soon as Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice, there’s a reaction—not from her but from her own unborn child, the son who will become John the Baptist.  He leaps in her womb; he jumps for joy.

Why?  The unborn child of course can’t explain.  His mother, “filled with the Holy Spirit” (1:41), divinely inspired, does explain:  “How does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (1:43).  Both unborn John and elderly Elizabeth recognize the presence of God in Mary’s womb.  The word Elizabeth uses, “Lord” (Kyrios in Luke’s Greek), is the scriptural way of referring to God.  If you’re old enuf, you remember when Mass was in Latin, and at the beginning we had a little litany, Kyrie, eleison; Christe, eleison; Kyrie, eleison (actually that’s Greek, not Latin):  “Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy.”  So right from the beginning of his earthly existence, before he’s even born, Jesus is recognized as God, and his coming causes rejoicing in the family that receives him.

That’s one point that St. Luke is making thru this story.

Another point is that these events that he’s describing fulfill what the Old Testament had foreshadowed.  He makes this point very subtly.  If we ask who else leapt for joy at the presence of God, we find that it was King David when he escorted the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, as described in the 2d Book of Samuel:  “David went to bring up the ark of God … into [Jerusalem] amid festivities.  As soon as the bearers of the ark had advanced six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling.  Then David, girt with a linen apron, came dancing before the Lord with abandon, as he all the Israelites were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts of joy and to the sound of the horn” (6:12-15).

David Dancing before the Ark by an artist of the Venetian school, 17th c.

When John leaps in Elizabeth’s womb, he’s leaping, like King David, because a new Ark of God has arrived.  “Ark of the Covenant” is a title that we give to Mary, e.g. in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, because she held, she contained, the Son of God within herself; she was God’s dwelling place for 9 months and his motherly shelter during his childhood and adolescence.

A 3d point comes in one of the blessings that Elizabeth pronounces:  “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (1:45).  She’s already blessed Mary kind of non-specifically:  “Blessed are you among women” (1:42)—you recognize there a fragment of our favorite prayer, the Hail Mary.  Now Elizabeth tells us why Mary is “blessed among women,” and it’s not because she’s Jesus’ mother but because she “believed that what was spoken to [her] by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

During his public preaching, Jesus is going to make the exact same point—and, again, it’s Luke, only Luke among the 4 gospel writers, who tells this story:  “A woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that carried you, and breasts at which you nursed.’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (11:27-28).  So Mary isn’t blessed because she’s Jesus’ mother; if that were the source of divine blessing, the rest of us would be out of luck, wouldn’t we?  Rather, Jesus says, she’s blessed, and anyone is blessed, for listening to God’s word and observing that word.  That’s a blessing open to all of us, as is the blessing that Elizabeth pronounces:  blessed are you for believing that the Lord’s word to you would be fulfilled.

God’s word is addressed to all of us.  God’s Word par excellence is Jesus himself, who speaks to each of us—in the sacred Scriptures, in the sacred liturgy, in the moral law, in the teachings of his Church, in the individual responsibilities that each of us has because of his or her vocation.  All of these “words of the Lord” are potential sources of blessings for us—if only we do our best to live them out, to believe them, to put them into practice.

When we recognize God’s Word in our lives, it’s something joyful.  We might not literally dance like King David, but maybe our hearts will do a little jump, like the unborn boy in Elizabeth’s womb.  For sure, living out God’s Word is the only way that we’ll be fulfilled as persons and as Christians; the only way that we’ll be happy in this life or in the life to come.