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AND THE angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." [Lk 1:35]

Artist: Victor Luciano Rebuffo

(1903 - 1983)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

HOUSE OF FAITH [1]

HUMAN POWERS VANISH

1. The nativity of Jesus Christ is welcome news for a dispirited but hopeful world; our Saviour's birth heralds the cherished tidings of God's steadfast love for his people. The incarnation of God as man is a proclamation of hope, a promise of renewal whispered in the depths broken hearts, a signal light that revives failing spirits, a splendid banquet for hungry souls. The birth of Jesus Christ in the flesh is the answer to man's search for love's fulfillment.

2. The nativity story is good for us and good for the world. It is an answer, yet it challenges Catholics in every generation. Mere change will not suffice. Complete transformation is required. Without forsaking reality, therefore, God begins by overturning human expectations. All human powers vanish before the authority of one word of truth spoken by God: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord." [Isa 55:8]

POOR AND UNDISTINGUISHED

3. Recall the story of Mary, daughter of Joachim and Anne. Mary is a young woman, a girl actually, in the Jewish culture of first-century Palestine. Her culture is time-tested and its people are tenacious survivors of defeat and exile; Jewish leaders are determined to triumph over their Roman oppressors. More important, the people's respect for the family and religious institutions is closely associated with tangible, personal status and the veneration of society's elder members.

4. Mary is a female in a paternal Palestinian world. She is poor, and her family history is undistinguished. Like most women of her culture, she values highly the institution of marriage. She is betrothed to Joseph; these vows are binding. Although Mary continues to live with her parents for a time, she is considered by all to be the wife of Joseph. Soon Joseph must receive Mary into the home that he has provided. The good Joseph has promised to fulfill Mary's expectations for a home, a family, a stable life and respect in the community. Mary's hopes and dreams, however, prove stillborn.

DRAMATIC DESTINY

5. She is pregnant outside of marriage--forewarned by an angel!--and her husband Joseph has declared his intent to legally separate. Mary's beloved cousin Elizabeth, advanced in years and childless, may be the only one who will understand. She, too, has endured disapproval and humiliation in her community: to her shame, she has never conceived and raised children. Perhaps the two women can commiserate. In the midst of difficult and painful circumstances, these two women enjoy a rich relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Admittedly, both women know the meaning of suffering.

6. Yet these humble servants of the truth know the depth and breadth of the Father's abundant love: "everlasting to everlasting upon those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments." [Psa 103:17-18] God intends a dramatic and comprehensive destiny for Mary and Elizabeth. Their discipleship will be a fertile sign of his redemptive plan for the children of Abraham: "For you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." [Exo 33:17] Moreover, their lives are to be revered among the gentile peoples. Mary and Elizabeth's free-will assent to God is a resounding affirmation of the fundamental dignity of all human life and sanctifying grace.

MERCY AND TENDERNESS

7. Of Jesus and John, the psalmist prophesies: "Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." [Psa 139:16] God has consecrated them in the womb. The unborn Jesus and John are ordained in utero to undertake the arduous work of Israel's spiritual regeneration; they are destined to change the course of human history. The remarkable mission of these two unborn children proves to humanity that the "life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind" is in Gods hands; "the spirit of God has made us, and the breath of the Almighty gives us life." [Job 12:10, 33:4]

8. The Lord gains no pleasure from one whose life is barren of purpose and meaning. To the contrary, God wills his divine love to be accessible. He graciously condescends to let man approach him through and prayer and worship. Indeed, God allows man to commune with him in prayer and in service to his Kingdom. He defends the innocent, and his divine plan champions the cause of the weakest and most helpless member of society. God sends his divine Spirit to breach the strongholds of self-indulgent and egoistic men and to "destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ". [2Cor 10:4-5] To the repentant sinner, God shows mercy. To the humble of heart, God shows tenderness.

MORE THAN ITS ORNAMENTS

9. Confess your sins! Turn to God, and he will not turn away from you! Open your eyes and ears. Behold the mighty deeds of Christ. Hear the Word of the Lord! The old order has passed away, the new order of grace lives in Christ. To be reconciled with Christ is be created anew [cf. 2Cor 5:17-18]; it is to share the good news of Christ's peace on earth to men of goodwill. [cf. Lk 2:14] When all appears lost, when human evidence counts for nothing, Christ offers us the miracle of his high priesthood. At the cost of his own blood, Our Lord has won for us the gate by which we may enter the heavenly sanctuary of the house of God: "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith." [Heb 10:22]

10. Faith made strong in hope leads to love. Any other miracle which follows must be understood as an affirmation of that love. For the dignity of the tree must remain greater than any of its ornaments. The mystery must prevail over any attempt to explain it. Without the mystery of the incarnation and the Word made flesh, how can one transcend the inevitability of death? Although death is built into the world, man eschews coming to terms with it. To confront death's finality forces one to confront sin's reality. Sin is man's attempt to define truth to suit himself. The word attempt is significant. Any effort to change the truth is an attempt to change reality. There is but one Truth. Comprehensive of divinity and humanity, of temporality and spirituality, God's Truth knows no artificial distinctions.

ABODE OF HUMAN DESTINY

11. The central reality of all Truth has been revealed and proven on the cross: Jesus Christ is Truth itself, the perfect unity of Word and flesh. That this mystery of salvation is not perfectly understood by man--still less subject to his powers--tempts man to perceive it as an illusion. This occurs when he mistakenly believes he has the capacity to fully comprehend himself and by extension the universe surrounding him. He repeatedly reaches out and clings to created things presupposing he has the answer to what he is seeking, or that mere human words are all that is necessary to validate his own perceptions of reality, or that he can master all creation and every problem.

12. Understandably man approaches despair when--after rejecting the revelation of faith--his natural expectations of the material world are betrayed by the very created things in which he has placed his hope. Long after the Israelites settled in permanent villages, the tent was symbolic of their wilderness experience after fleeing Egypt. The tent was a reminder that human life is conditional and temporary: "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." [2Cor 5:1] It was a way of speaking of the abode of human destiny: "The fate of the people's 'tent' is the fate of that people."^[2]

DOORWAYS AND WINDOWS

13. Mary, who consented to be the dwelling place of God's beloved Son, is our tent. The mother of Our Lord is the tent in which all men and women of good will take shelter in the day of misfortune. The incarnation of divinity and humanity occurred in her womb by the planting of the Spirit. Her personal mission encompasses the fate of all God's people, believers and non-believers alike. Mary, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit [Lk 1:35], images God's decisive intervention into a broken world. Do you remember the prophecy of Isaiah? "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." [Isa 7:14]

14. Hence, Mary's assent to the will of God is a sign of the Holy Spirits entrance into the community of faith and into the individual lives of its members. God can reverse the sterility and barrenness of our spiritual lives. God overcomes our human incapacity. The Lord triumphs over all evil, all heartache, all sorrows: "For with God nothing will be impossible." [Lk 1:37] The Christian man would do well to perceive his soul as a tent for the Spirit, a consecrated temple for the Lord: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are." [1Cor 3:16-71]

PROOF OF NEW CREATION

15. The word maidservant is not entirely relevant for most of us. A more suitable word would be servant. Mary, the flower of Israel, is the servant of Yahweh. Jesus himself would redefine the meaning of servant. The servant is now the disciple and friend of God, Theophilus (Gk.): "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." [Jn 15:15] Thus Our Lord reveals reform and regeneration as the proof of his new creation. [cf. 1Cor 15:23-28] The servant of Christ becomes the friend of Christ. Anger gives way to docility. Fear yields to confidence. True food is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ in the eucharistic miracle. If human expectations are not overturned, there can be no reform and regeneration.

16. How is salvation possible for the man in whose heart the wolf devours the lamb, and the sword strikes the shepherd, and the lion's jaws drip with blood, and the child that nurses is struck down by the viper? [cf. Isa 11:6-8, Zech 13:7] For what man will know salvation if his hardened heart remains unrepentant and contemptuous? What will Jesus say to those who show no evidence of change for the better? He will declare, "I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers." [Mt 7:23] Mary and Elizabeth are deserving of veneration, for they followed faithfully the will of God. Their assent to discipleship may be summed by the expression thy will which we invoke in the Lord's Prayer. As a reference to God, the pronoun thy assumes far greater magnitude than one would first suspect.

HOUSE OF FAITH

17. Thy signifies that someone greater than any human person or society is owed recognition and homage. This someone greater is none other than the person of "God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen."^[3] The invocation thy summons the man of faith to stand watch with our Lord Jesus Christ in Gethsemane, to witness his indescribable sorrow for the sake of lost souls: "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done." [Mt 26:42] The Church prefers the otherwise archaic English vocabulary thy, thou and art precisely because these markers clearly differentiate between man the creature and God the creator. Christ himself offered human witness for our sake. Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, represents the Church giving birth to Christ in the fullness of time. [cf. Rev 12:1-6]

18. Mary is our tent, the worthy temple in which the Son chooses to dwell. From the doorway and windows of this House of Faith pours the light of the Gospel into a darkened world. [cf. 2Pet 1:19] We proclaim the "mystery which was kept secret for long ages" [Rom 16:25]: "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star." [Rev 22:16] Glorify God as did Elizabeth who cried out, "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." [Lk 1:45] Offer a sacrifice of praise to God as did Mary when she proclaimed, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior"! [Lk 1:46-47]

^[1] Cycle B /Fourth Sunday of Advent /2Sam 7:1-5, 8-11, 16 /Rom 16:25-27 /Lk 1:26-38.

^[2] Allen C. Myers, et al., eds., "Tent", EERDMANS DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987) 993.

^[3] SACRAMENTARY, "Profession of Faith", Nicene Creed (1985).