Advent Gospel Reflection for 23rd December

The 4th Sunday of Advent

Mary shares her Good News with Elizabeth…

This Sunday is the fourth and last Sunday of Advent. Our journey of preparation to celebrate the birth of Jesus is almost complete; but not just yet; we still have a few more days left! So it is very fitting that this Sunday we encounter Mary just after she has been called and asked to be the Mother of Jesus. Having recovered and caught her breath after hearing God’s plan for her, Mary does not sit quietly and wonder what this is all about. The gospel begins with a journey. Mary set out and went as quickly as she could to visit her cousin Elizabeth. There is a sense of urgency and excitement about this; how could Mary possibly keep this amazingly good news to herself. She had to tell somebody what had just happened to her!

Neither Mary nor Elizabeth were wealthy, powerful, famous or influential. They both came from two small insignificant villages; Mary lived in Nazareth and Elizabeth lived Ain Karim, a town in the hill country of Judah. Yet it is in these two unimportant towns and through these two poor, but faithful women that God decided to fulfil the ancient Promise and Covenant: John the Baptist, the Herald, and Jesus, the Messiah, will be born. God is entering our world in an altogether new and radical way. Jesus will not be born in a temple, a palace or in Jerusalem, the holiest and most important city in Israel; but in Bethlehem in absolute poverty.

When Jesus begins his public ministry, he does so with these prophetic words: ‘I have come to bring the Good News to the Poor.’ Having being born poor in an animal shed himself; he comes to share God’s preferential love of the poor with the world.

In a few days, we will celebrate Christmas Day and the beginning of the Christmas Season, which lasts twelve days. We will recall that Mary and Joseph were homeless and took shelter in an animal shed. Their first visitors were not kings, queens, the powerful or the wealthy. The first people to see Jesus where the poorest of poor just like them; the shepherds. In Jesus, they saw someone they recognised; someone just like them; someone who would later say, I am the Good Shepherd.

One poet has written, that God must be allowed to surprise us. Through the birth of Jesus, God really surprises us. How God called Mary and Jesus’ own birth reveal to us the real character of God. God chooses those the world thinks as worthless as being priceless. The poor family of Nazareth; Mary, Jesus and Joseph are the ones through whom God breaks into our world this Christmas and every Christmas; today and every day.

– Br Michael Moore OMI

GOSPEL                       

Luke 1:39-45

Mary set out and went as quickly as she could to a town in the hill country of Judah. She went into Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. Now as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, ‘Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord? For the moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy.’