A Reflection for the Sunday of the Fourth Week of Advent
Readings: Mark 5: 1-4a Hebrews 10: 5-10 Luke 1: 39-45
All creatures are capable of suffering. Do any ever pass through existence without doing so? But we humans bear a unique burden when we suffer, physically or mentally. When we suffer, the consciousness that characterizes our lives turns from unfocused blessing to relentless scourge.
Unlike other creatures, because we live in time—we know that we come from one moment and are going on to another—we cannot stop wondering when our suffering will end. We thus end up suffering across time. Today is bad. Will tomorrow be worse? The very thought swells the day’s troubles.
We also know—again in a uniquely human way—that we are alone in our suffering. No one can step into our consciousness and feel the physical pain that we feel. No one can occupy our spot in the world and see the terrors that surround us. Joy is infectious. Sadness may be as well, but suffering sunders us from the rest of the world. We are never more alone.
Unlike other creatures, because we live in time—we know that we come from one moment and are going on to another—we cannot stop wondering when our suffering will end.
Finally, when we truly suffer, we do so before the silent face of God. Some may say that they do not believe in God, others that they do. In both cases, God remains an open question on this side of death, one we choose to ignore or ponder as we will. But when we suffer, the presumed strength and certainty of our own existence begin to collapse. Then the believer and the unbeliever become as one, asking, “How can there be a God who allows me to suffer like this?” Or, to say the same as an agnostic might, “Have I sought the good in vain? Is the goodness of life an illusion?”
So, this is who we are when we suffer. We are conscious of our pain; we are aware that we are alone; we know that God has not intervened.
And here is the Gospel.
Mary set out
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth (Lk 1:39-40).
No one becomes a Gospel character without being a case for catechesis. Countless people were contemporaries of Christ, but we are not told of his companions unless they fit the purpose of the Gospel, which is two-fold: to tell us who he is and how we should respond to him.
So, who is Mary? Like any other character in the Gospel, we are meant to try on her life in meditation, to learn from her what it means to be a disciple. Who is Mary? Do not fall back on worn piety. Come at the question anew. Everyone has a mother. That is not enough. Why does this woman dominate the opening of St. Luke’s Gospel? Why are we told of her mission of haste into the hill country? Who is Mary?
So, who is Mary? Like any other character in the Gospel, we are meant to try on her life in meditation, to learn from her what it means to be a disciple.
She is one of us. She knows that she suffers the torments of time alone, seeking her savior. She has just been told by an angel that she will conceive in her womb and bear a son and that she shall name him Jesus. Do not superimpose a screen on the Gospel. Do not think that, in contrast to your own life, God has entered Mary’s in a way that forestalls questions. God has never done that, will never do that. God cannot, because to do so would destroy the meaning, the purpose of our lives in the world, which is to stand free of God, even while being the gift of God.
However it happened that the angel manifested himself to Mary, it was not in such a way as to forestall questions or her need for faith. St. Luke makes this clear when the Virgin herself must ask:
How can this be,
since I have no relations with a man? (1:34).
Thank God that the angel Gabriel begins by proclaiming the Gospel in a gulp, God’s good news, to this young woman.
Hail, favored one.
The Lord is with you.
Do not be afraid, Mary,
for you have found favor with God (1:28, 30).
First, hear those words as being directed to her. Then, remember that because they are Gospel, however reconfigured, they are spoken as well to us.
Hail, favored one.
The Lord is with you.
Do not be afraid,
for you have found favor with God.
Mary is one of us. She says yes, but this consent does not remove her from the human condition. She will suffer physically and psychologically. She will not know when it will end. And like every one of us, she will suffer alone. She will seek her savior. She will wonder what this means. How can she belong to God, how can there be a God, if she is made to suffer so?
Mary is one of us. She says yes, but this consent does not remove her from the human condition. She will suffer physically and psychologically. She will not know when it will end.
No one becomes a Gospel character without having something to teach. You are only cast in this play if you can proclaim the good news. So, we should also ask, who is Elizabeth?
She is the one who tells us the deepest truth of the Virgin. Mary’s motherhood is, on the level of her own life, a means to an end. Her deepest dignity lies in her being a disciple, indeed the first disciple. Her fecundity is not a given, not something imposed upon her. It is the fruit of her faith. Mary says yes to Christ before ever hearing him preach, before ever witnessing a miracle.
Elizabeth is given the privilege of proclaiming what might be called the Gospel of Mary. Remember, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God was composed as recipe, not record. And so, in hearing who Mary is, we are also told who we are. Indeed, in revealing the awesome dignity of Mary’s discipleship, St. Luke’s Elizabeth gives us, here and now, the great evangelical commission.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled (1:45)
