4th Sunday of Advent B
2 Samuel 7:1-5; Romans 16: 25-27; Luke
1: 26-38
With Christmas celebration a few days
away, it is difficult to set a little time apart to reflect on God
and ‘me’. God understands this, but do I understand this? Do I
continue the rushing around and adding ‘more’ to my Christmas
preparations? ‘I forgot … and they just gave me a gift? I’ve
finished my shopping but this little item would be just perfect for …
and maybe I didn’t give them as many presents as I gave that
person. It seems that I can come up with all sorts of reasons and so
many of them very valid, for not taking time to reflect on God and
‘me’.
The main point of the readings today is
that God ‘BROKE INTO’ the lives of David, Paul and Mary. Am I
allowing Him to break into my life?
David wanted to ‘do something really
nice for the Lord by giving Him a fitting dwelling place’.
Certainly this was a really nice gesture but God has eternal plans.
God is providing an eternal house that David could never imagine:
God will establish David’s lineage and his descendant will become
heir to a throne that will last forever. God will build the house of
David.
In Paul’s conclusion to his letter to
the Romans, he summarizes various themes from the letter. The bottom
line is that if we are looking for God, look to Jesus. As Jesus
said, ‘If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.’ Alice
Camille in Exploring the Sunday Readings says, “The
Old Testament is the story of God viewed from the perspective of
God’s people. The New Testament tells the story from the encounter
with God’s Son. Through teaching and healing, in living and loving
and dying, Jesus demonstrates for us what God is like. God is our
companion from the moment of conception to our final breath. And
that’s only the beginning of the companionship, as Jesus makes
clear. If we want to know the rest of the story, we have to follow
Him through the doorway to new life.”
Today’s gospel gives another example
of God ‘breaking into each person’s life’ in the story of Mary.
Just imagine a teenage girl living a quiet life with her own hopes
and dreams and along comes an angel who says that he is God’s
messenger. The message is that she is to be the mother of God’s Son
who is to be the Savior of the World. It sounds like a Hollywood
script, yet no human author could have written a script so stunning
and brilliant. Mary was a real girl who received this visit and
message. She was a prayerful person who loved God and was faithful
and obedient to Him. She was totally open to God working in and
through her although she had NO IDEA of what the future would hold.
SHE REFLECTED… Scripture repeats a few times that Mary “kept
all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19).
What did her reflection bring? Certainly an affirmation of
her faith and trust in God and the courage to continue on with God’s
plan, knowing nothing about where this would lead her. One of the
spectacular places that I have visited was the house of Mary at
Ephesus where she lived with John after the crucifixion and death of
Jesus. It is an ‘L’ shaped house with two rooms both very small.
There are a few statues, icons, paintings and candles and incense
all around. The feeling of awe and holiness permeated me as I
entered. There was a long line coming into the site and as soon as
people entered it seemed to me that all were overcome with being in
the presence of the holiness of Mary and of God.
The bottom line is what the readings
tell us…each of us is a temple of God…and since God is with each
of us all the time, we are holy. Do I act this way? Do I take time
to be with God in gratitude and in expectation? Can I readjust my
‘schedule’ from now to Christmas and ‘put God there’?
Reflect: We are the body of Christ.
How can I be the fragile receptacle for God-life today?”
SOME THOUGHTS ON CHRISTMAS Fr.
Richard Rohr in his, Preparing for Christmas, Daily Meditations
for Advent shares this reflection on John 1:18, the Gospel for
Christmas Day.
SOMEONE
TO SURRENDER TO
“On
this Christmas Day, let me begin with a quote from twentieth-century
writer G.K. Chesterton: ‘When a person has found something which he
prefers to life itself, he [sic] for the first time has begun to
live.’ Jesus in His proclamation of the kingdom told us what we
could prefer to life itself—and it would work! The Bible ends by
telling us we are called to be a people who could say, ‘Come, Lord
Jesus’ (Revelation 22:20), who could welcome something more than
business as usual and live in God’s Big Picture. We all have to
ask for the grace to prefer something to our small life itself
because we have been offered the shared Life, the One Life, the
Eternal Life, God’s Life that became visible in this world in
Jesus. We do not get there by being correct. We get there by
allowing the connection. It is like a free wireless connection!
The
kingdom is finally to be identified as the Lord Jesus Himself. When
we say ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ on this Christmas Day, we are
preferring His Lordship to any other loyalty system or any other
final frame of reference. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not! If
Jesus is Lord, then the economy and stock market are not! If Jesus
is Lord, then my house and possessions, family and job are not! If
Jesus is Lord, than I am not! That multileveled implication was
obvious to first century members of the Roman Empire because the
phrase ’Caesar is Lord’ was the empire’s loyalty test and
political bumper sticker. They, and others, knew they had changed
‘parities’ when they welcomed Jesus as Lord instead of the Roman
emperor as their savior.
What
we are all searching for is Someone to surrender to, something we can
prefer to life itself. Well here is the wonderful surprise: God is
the only one we can surrender to without losing ourselves. The irony
is that we find ourselves, and now in a whole new field of meaning.
This happens on a lesser level in every great love in our lifetime,
but it is always a leap of faith ahead of time. We are never sure it
will be true beforehand. It is surely counter-intuitive, but it is
the promise that came into the world on this Christmas Day, ‘full
of grace and of truth.’ Jesus is the gift totally given, free for
the taking, once and for all, to everybody and all of creation. This
Cosmic Risen Christ really is free
wireless, and all we have
to do is connect.
Henceforth
humanity has the right to know that it is good
to be human, good to live on this earth, good to have a body, because
God in Jesus chose and said ‘yes’ our humanity. Or as we
Franciscans love to say, ‘Incarnation is already Redemption.’
The problem is solved. Now go and utterly enjoy all remaining days.
Not only is it “Always Advent,’ but every day can now be
Christmas because the one we thought we were just waiting for has
come once and for all.”
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