This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 1:26-38:
The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “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. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.”
Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Happy Christmas Eve to all our readers, and a happy final Sunday of Advent to you as well! The time for preparation is nearly over — only hours remain, literally in my case. I will sing at our parish’s Midnight Mass tonight, and as I discovered when I first moved to Texas, they’re serious about the “midnight” part of the term. (My previous parish planned it so that the end of Mass brushed up against midnight.)
My Sunday, then, will consist of preparing for my part in the choir, as well as trying to get a good, long nap in sometime in the mid-afternoon. My wife will likely be working on her part of Christmas dinner, which we will spend for the first time in many years with my mother, who moved close to us this year. It will be a special weekend, but still full of work and service before we get to the joy.
Today’s readings hint at that as well, and even more, remind us of the importance of perspective to all of these preparations. Our first reading from 2 Samuel tells the story of David’s plans to celebrate the Lord’s presence by commissioning a temple. “Here I am living in a house of cedar,” David declares, “while the ark of God dwells in a tent!”
David’s plan initially meets with favor from the prophet Nathan, but the Lord rebukes them both for getting their priorities out of order. God reminds both of them that it was He who built Israel a house, not the other way around, by providing it the Promised Land. The Lord also declares that He will build a ‘house’ for David in dynastic terms, rather than the other way around, and that this dynastic line will “endure forever.”
The Advent of Christ, dually of that House of David, fulfills that promise in Christmas. Jesus, born in poverty as a Nazarene, becomes the cornerstone of the eternal kingdom despite our own rejection of Him on the cross.
But this reminds us that human wisdom fails, and that trust in the Lord is our path to salvation. The Israelites spent centuries preparing for the Messiah before Jesus, but they prepared on the terms they sought rather than trust in the Lord’s plan. All of that preparation turned out to be almost entirely for naught when Jesus proclaimed the Gospel. The temple that the Lord allowed David’s son Solomon to be built became an idol of sorts, as Jeremiah warned before and during the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. As Jesus warned, the second temple was just as easily destroyed as the first, but the true Temple — Christ, begotten of God — could not be conquered or lost at all.
Today’s Gospel recounts the Magnificat and Mary’s great Fiat as a contrast to the plans of humans. Mary did not plan for pregnancy, nor any sort of scandal or disruption to her life. We know that she had the fullness of grace and loved the Lord, and must have expected to live the life of His humble servant in the ways of the women of her village. She had no ambitions to build a temple to the Lord, let alone become a temple of the Lord.
And yet, when the angel asks her to follow the will of God, she not only acquiesces but declares her trust in the Lord: “Let it be done to me according to Your word.” She doesn’t ask any further questions or set conditions; Mary doesn’t lament over her own plans. Mary, in essence, gives up the idea of building her own life and allows the Lord to build His life within her.
This is what the Lord told David through Nathan. Don’t build me a house, but allow me to build a house within you. The Lord calls us to allow Him into our hearts so that Christ can make them into temples of the Lord. This is the preparation to which we are called at Advent.
We celebrate the birth of Christ in many ways, all of them with their joys and cares. We should ask ourselves, though, whether we are busying ourselves building a house for a messiah that we want to define for our own purposes and ambitions, or whether we are allowing ourselves to trust the Lord to build those temples in our hearts Himself, and on His terms.
Merry Christmas Eve to all of our readers!
The front-page image is “Birth of St. John the Baptist” by Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1550s. On display at the Hermitage Museum. Via Wikimedia Commons.
“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.