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OMELIE / Omelie EN

23 dic 2018
23/12/2018  4th Sunday in Advent - C

23/12/2018  4th Sunday in Advent - C

Reading 1 MI 5,1-4 * Psalm 79 * Reading 2 HEB 10,5-10 * Gospel LK 1,39-48

 

We began Advent in order to get ready to the coming of the Son of Man, who will come with power and glory. We are getting to the end of it focusing our eyes on the environment that has welcomed Jesus when he came into history. The prophet Micah writes about Him as someone coming from “ancient times”, who will “shepherd his flock by the strength of the Lord” and who, with his presence, will guarantee peace up to the furthest borders of the earth! The prophet gives also us the precise information on the place of his birth, Bethlehem-Ephrathah! With this piece of information we can as well start waiting for the Child, who is going to be given us by “she who is to give birth”! We are waiting for Him full of hope, and with joy we prepare ourselves to recognize Him and meet Him.

You can meet Him even without seeing Him with your eyes! The story told by the Gospel introduces us to this mystery. Pushed by her child, still hidden in her womb, Elisabeth recognizes the mother of the Child announced by the prophets. Kept secret, this Child makes the other hidden child rejoice, and his mother too! The eyes cannot help, as they will not be of help for Thomas in order to recognize the Risen, but the faith that convinces and moves the heart more than the eyes can!

We stop on the threshold of Zachariah’s house and we listen to the two women’s greetings, who meet after having experienced such faith and love destined to transform the world. Their experience of faith has already changed their life. Elisabeth, becoming aware she has been granted her wish by God and she is mother, has kept herself hidden in the house, waiting in wonder. Mary, becoming aware of her task to become the mother of a Son who will be and will be called “of the Most High”, has started on foot in a hurry.

Now they, so different and so similar, meet. Both of them are inspired by the Holy Spirit, and, opening their mouth, utter words of praise! Elisabeth praises God’s greatest work, blessing the Mother who has come to her, and the Son who she carries in her: she calls her “the mother of my Lord”! These are very important words, an act of faith in Jesus’ divinity and in Mary’s divine maternity! They are important for us, because they help us to put together our prayer and they confirm us in the faith that the Church, faithful to the Scriptures, has always conveyed to us. Furthermore, Elisabeth calls Mary blessed for her faith as well: “You who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled”! She understood the experience of her young relative and she saw that she started moved by faith. Mary, in fact, has taken seriously the Angel’s word, she has recognized it as God’s Word and she has consequently taken action. She has believed that God’s word is true, that it is a good enough reason to take steps, to act.

To her relative’s greeting, Mary answers with a series of quotes from the Psalms, a demonstration that her life was absorbed by prayer! The first reaction of this mother is joy, a pure joy, serene, deep, coming from the divine intervention. She knows to be a simple servant, but she enjoys being God’s servant, that God who loves men, who loves the humble, and therefore He will make use of her in order to realize this love for everybody. To be a servant is her greatness, to be humble is assurance to be of some use for God!

This disposition of Mary’s will be the one lived by her Son! Did he learn it from her? Or did she take in advance from Him the true behavior that God likes? In the Scriptures, the letter to the Hebrews says, it is written that He, coming in the worlds, volunteers to fulfill the Father’s will: “Behold, I come to do your will”. He then wants to be God’s servant: to this end He wants to use His body, the human body prepared for Him by God Himself. This attitude starts for Him since he was in Mary’s womb, and the mother takes part in it!

Mary is offering us the true way to get ready to the coming of her Son: to be similar to Him, to take part in His availability to fulfill the Father’s will, to volunteer with Him in His work in the world.

Let us try to offer Jesus the space of our heart for His coming this year: let us keep the heart ready, humble, without any other desire but His. Let us modify the prophet Micah’s words, and, instead of “Bethlehem-Ephrathah” let us put our name, the name of our family!

May this be the new place of the presence of whom spreads peace!