We
always make the fatal mistake of thinking that it is what we do that matters,
when really what matters is what we let God do to us. God sent the angel to
Mary, not to ask her to do something, but to let something be done. Since God
is a better artisan than you, the more you abandon yourself to him, the happier
he can make you.
Fulton Sheen Seven Words of Jesus and Mary
The
world around us can get things so wrong: with all the build-up around us we
might easily think that it was already Christmas Day, that the true message of
Christmas was one of conspicuous consumption, and spending money. Every year it
seems that the decorations go up a bit earlier, and yet here we are in church,
still waiting. I don’t know about you, but I for one am not overly keen on
waiting, and yet it is what the church is called to be, to live out in the
world. We are to be a people who watch and wait, in joyful hope and expectation
– we are to be like Mary and Joseph – people who are waiting for God. In the
prophesy of Isaiah we see the hope of salvation dawning in God-with-us,
Emmanuel. God’s promise is fulfilled through the patience of Mary & Joseph,
and their obedience to God’s will: ‘he did what the Angel of the Lord told him
to do’. It is an obedience to the Father’s will borne out through suffering,
death & resurrection which characterises the mission of the Son, this is
what brings about our salvation. We in obedience look for his second coming as
our Saviour and our Judge, and as the Church we have an opportunity to ponder
these mysteries – to stop for a while amid the business of our modern existence
and reflect upon the wondrous nature of God’s love for us and all humanity: we
can stop for a moment and consider both what it means and how it affects our
lives.
As the Church, the people of God,
which we enter through our baptism, we are called to proclaim the Good News, to
live out the story of Jesus in our lives, and we call the world to stop and to
consider exactly what we are celebrating at Christmas: a free gift, of hope and
salvation for all people, in a baby, born in a stable, among the poor and the
marginalised.
The world around us is quick to judge,
it wants to do the right thing – it is a bit like Joseph trying to save Mary
the embarrassment and the shame. Thankfully God has other ideas, because he who
will be born will save his people from their sins – what wonderful news this
is. Those sins which separate us from each other and from God, this falling
short of what we know we could or should be – this is what Jesus saves us from.
We are to take this opportunity to stop and to ponder this wondrous fact, to
reflect upon what ‘God-with-us’ means to us and our lives.
The act of love which we will
experience in Our Lord’s Nativity should draw us to love God and our neighbour,
to live out the love which becomes flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, which
will become flesh and blood that we can touch and taste, here, this morning, to
feed us, so that we might share His divine life. So let us imitate the mystery
we celebrate, let us be filled with and transformed by the divine life of love,
let us like Mary and Joseph wait on the Lord, and be transformed by him, to
live out our faith in our lives so that the world might believe and sing the
praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be
ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and
power, now and forever.
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