Sunday 24th December 2006ADVENT IV
Fr David Cherry
Micah 5 : 2 - 5a ; Hebrews 10 : 5 – 10 ; Luke 1 : 39 – 55
Blessed art thou among women.”
Two instances:
At a staff Christmas party someone said : I love the Christmas stories but I don’t believe in it. I am an atheist.
‘Of her flesh God takes flesh’ – this is how close God is.
And another member of staff – “it’s for children
that’s what it’s all about, Dave, isn’t it.
Lovely to see the children enjoying themselves.”
And we will all come across such instances.
Nigella tells us warmly of the richness of Christmas tradition in her
mother’s cooking and passing it on. We want a sense of
that: nostalgia; family tradition; customs; belonging. Coming from
somewhere, going somewhere. This is what we’re about. We
want this for our children too.
But recent polls spell the gloom of indifference in our society.
63% say they are not religious even though half of them would say they
are Christians. At the same time the cradle of our faith, the
Christian communities of Bethlehem, Iraq and throughout the Middle East
suffer marginalisation and worse.
I invite you to ponder these sorts of instances and paradoxes.
The longing to belong and of a tradition and the prevalent cynicism;
the indifference to freedom to celebrate while others suffer for what
has become an embarrassment to our sophistication. I invite you
to wonder at what they really mean about others and yourself.
Here lies a long conversation over dinner.
Our Lady, who Christians love and venerate, is steeped in a tradition.
She is the product of a People, formed by the Hebrew scriptures, long
held beliefs and customs. Her great song, the Magnificat which
hundreds of composers have set to music, is not original. It is a song
full of resonances and other songs. She knew Hannah’s song from
the book of Samuel. It is blended with the songs of Jewish hope and
expectation that had shaped her life, in-formed who she was, given her
meaning, her sense of self, her place, her identity; where she had come
from; where she was going. She is a woman deeply embedded in a
tradition.
Her surprise at the Annunciation has moved into a confident exaltation
of faith by someone who has found herself in God’s purposes,
filled with grace, being brought to the full knowledge of who she is
and what she is about. She knows the Lord is very nigh, close at
hand.
“Of her flesh He took flesh” writes Hopkins in his poem The
Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe. And Hopkins
goes on to speak of how God ‘….takes fresh and fresh /
Though much the mystery how’; making new Nazareths and Bethlems
in us so that we ‘here may draw like breath / More Christ and
baffle death. And that you and I being born so, may ‘come
to be / New self and nobler me.
The tradition conveys to you and me something so deep: that God is
nigh, close at hand. ‘Of her flesh God takes flesh’
– this is how close God is. It is enough to give me goose
flesh; to make the hair stand up on one’s neck.
Elizabeth exclaims: And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
She recognises Mary to be the Bearer of God to the world. (In Greek : Theo-tokos. )
In Elizabeth’s once barren womb, John the Baptist leaps for joy in recognition of his Lord.
The heavens cannot contain such a truth; the earth can only be glad.
Blessed art thou among women.
At the beginning of Dante’s Paradiso, Dante says something
like: If you cannot recognise the Bread of Angels you will never
be able to realise that you are in Paradise. You will make no
sense of it. You need a poetic imagination to transcend the
mundanity of our assumptions.
And it has socio-political implications: Into our midst comes the One
to fulfil God’s will – as Hebrews tells us; one who will
overturn our society which places so much emphasis and gives such
adulation to power and achievement; and which sacrifices so many in its
march of progress.
Mary knows this. She knows that God is not remote. Her
spirituality is not one of faith in a dis-carnate, non-fleshly,
non-human, non personal, non-political force, but in a God who
intervenes in the human story – in her very own; a God who will
come to birth and by the offering of himself confound the wisdom of the
wise and make known the healing of forgiveness.
Here, in the final hours of Advent expectation: Here in your own flesh
is God for you, born of a maiden, One who is from the least of the
tribes of Judah, only Bethlehem Ephratha. But no longer will we
be able to say anyone is least of anything; merely human, or that Mary
is just any person; or anyone only a woman, anyone just a
foreigner. For God has hallowed – made holy –
all things by becoming part of it. God does not dum-down
humanity, but enters in and shows us of what infinite worth we are.
We are invited in Holy Communion to receive not just bread and wine but
the Bread of Angels; the reality of God himself. In the womb of
Mary we are invited to recognise God coming forth into the world.
Forth from his chamber goeth he, (we will sing at Midnight)
that royal home of purity,
a giant in twofold substance one,
rejoicing now his course to run.
Thy cradle here shall glitter bright,
And darkness breathe a newer light,
Where endless faith shall shine serene,
And twilight never intervene.
The Lord is nigh, close at hand. May our hearts leap for joy
too. We salute you great Mother of our Incarnate God.
Blessed, truly blessed are we by the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Amen