4th Sunday of Advent

The promise that God originally uttered in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, “You will strike at his heel, while he strikes at your head,” is ready to begin, to take flesh, and be accomplished. This was accomplished in its essence by God alone, but he asked others to partake in Jesus’ journey, and one such person who partook more than rest was Mary, his mother.

In the first reading from Isaiah and then again in St. Matthew, “they shall name him Emmanuel . . .God is with us” is to be understood not symbolically or figuratively, but literally. Jesus is God! And he will come to us in the flesh, his flesh is from Mary, therefore he is also fully human. He comes to do what we cannot because of our weakness. He will come to repair what we damaged.

The beautiful part of Jesus’ mission is that he does not go it alone. Rather he surrounds himself with community, i.e. 12 apostles, and many other disciples. Jesus is mission on earth, to bring Good News and grace is a mission he allows others to share in.

And there is one person in particular that he allows to share in it more than the rest and that is our Blessed Mother, as I have already mentioned. There would be no Emmanuel without the Virgin’s consent. Just as there was a man and a woman in the Garden that said yes to sin under the tree, so too would there be a man and a woman consenting to grace under the tree when it came to restoring what was broken. Jesus is the one mediator and everything flows from his sacrifice, but nevertheless he allows us to all share in it, and we can see that the Blessed Mother does so in a very profound way.

She is there to say “yes” to Gabriel when asked if she would take on this responsibility to raise the Son of God, she was there in Bethlehem (BREAD) by the manger (ALTAR) when she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, she was there when he was presented in the temple (and a sword began to pierce her heart), she was there at the Wedding Feast of Cana (interceding for us), and finally she was under the tree watching her son give his life for all.

We cannot praise this woman enough for her sacrifices, her faith, and even her love of us. Let us not forget the role the Immaculate Virgin plays during our Advent journey and most of all Christmas day. We journey ourselves to Bethlehem so that we will see Christ lying in the manger, it was Mary who made that journey first so that we too could make it now. In this last week of preparing for the Lord of our own going up to Bethlehem we need to make that journey along with our Blessed Mother, to leave her out of the preparation is to leave out a necessary part that God himself choose for us, and that is Mary’s motherhood of all the faithful. She is there with us, the way we recognize her is to ponder her own life in our hearts. People will do so by praying the rosary, novenas, or some other type of devotion. It should not be considered outdated or something pre-Vatican II, to pray rosaries, novenas, or other types of devotions to our Blessed Lady, since Vatican II itself called Mary, “Mediatrix, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Advocate.” (C.f. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, nn61-62).

We cannot be a community without her, it’s impossible; she is part of the prophecy in Genesis 3:15 which comes to fulfillment once she says “yes” to the angel Gabriel. And from there she is part of every major community movement in the Church, especially during the end of Jesus’ life and the beginning of the Church. We are not isolated from those who have gone before us, they are with us through grace and Mary continues to help us during our journey, she helped her own son, why would she not help us? And finally, Christ never stops giving us gifts, and besides salvation itself he gave us the most precious thing in his life, his own mother from the foot of his cross. “Son, behold your mother, Woman, behold your son.” By Fr. John Picinic