December 24, 2023
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the 4th Sunday of Advent (Year B) on December 24, 2023 at The Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-16; Psalm 89; Romans 16:25-27; and Luke 1:26-38.
Time passes quickly! Here we are, on this 4th Sunday of Advent as ridiculously late in December as it can be. (Pay no attention to the decorations behind me.) If you’re here at Mass, you’re probably ready for Christmas, or you’re so far behind that you’ll never make it, anyway!
Today’s gospel passage is the Annunciation. It’s one of the most familiar Bible passages to us, but let’s try to hear it today as if it’s for the first time.
Time passes quickly in the Bible, too. In the first verse of our gospel today, Luke has jumped forward six months from the previous verse about Zechariah and Elizabeth. But I imagine there’s another time gap within the passage we’ll hear today. Somehow, I doubt Mary immediately replied to Gabriel, “May it be done to me according to your word” after he conveyed his tidings. She must have needed a few moments, a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, or even longer before she responded to God’s invitation. Mary may have been sinless, but she was also human.
In humility, let us ask God to shower us again with mercy.
Luke is a big fan of geography and history, and he makes a special point of how he introduces the names of Nazareth, Joseph, and Mary to his readers in this passage.
At the time of Jesus, Nazareth was probably a village of 40-50 families, in a remote province of the Roman Empire, the world superpower of its day. Most people in Rome probably had not heard of the region of the Galilee, let alone the village of Nazareth. If the Annunciation were to happen in a similar place today, maybe it would happen in a place like Humåtak [oo-MAH-tek]. Never heard of Humåtak? It’s a village of about 600 people in Guam, a remote territory of the world’s current superpower, the United States. Most people in the United States couldn’t find the island of Guam on a map, let alone the village of Humåtak.
And the appearance of an angel was not a common experience. In the Hebrew Bible, angels appeared to prophets, priests, and kings. For one — especially the archangel Gabriel — to appear to a young woman in a remote village must have been particularly shocking.
We can presume that Mary was immersed in Jewish culture. She lived among a people who had hoped that God would unify the ancient nation of Israel that had faced nearly a thousand years of civil war, oppression, and destruction. Jewish people prayed that God would fulfill the promise to make a descendant of David the leader of the nation. But Mary wasn’t royalty. How could her son be this promised king?
And he would also be the child of God? There had been ideas brewing in Judaism for about 700 years about the coming of a Messiah or the return of Elijah. But no one expected that God would become a human being!
And there’s the whole pregnancy thing. Unexpected pregnancies have happened throughout history, and they are usually life-altering events that shake up an entire family. But Mary’s pregnancy was likely the most unexpected pregnancy in all of history. In the society in which Mary lived, a pregnancy before marriage was especially frightening. Mary may not have known Joseph that well. How was he to believe that she had kept her promise to him? And even if Joseph trusted her – and let’s remember that there was no precedent in human history for this biological anomoly – Mary’s pregnancy would be considered a scandal to her, her family, and her entire village. But even more than that, Jewish law called for harsh penalties on unwed mothers and their parents. Even today, women in parts of the world face the real possibility of being killed if they get pregnant before marriage!
So before we get caught up in the beauty of this story, let’s remember how shocking and how scary it was for Mary. Surely, before Mary said “Yes” to God, she recognized that her consent would launch her and her child into a life of uncertainty and risk, even possibly death.
And yet, Mary said “Yes” to God, the God of surprises. The God who surprised the prophet Nathan and the king David a thousand years earlier by refusing David’s offer to build God a temple but offering to build David an everlasting dynasty instead. As Christians, we believe that Mary’s “Yes” allowed Christ to be born into the world and establish the Church which still exists today, with Mary as its first member and believer.
Back in the summer of 2004, I took a leap of faith that seemed to make no sense to my friends and neighbors. It didn’t make much sense to me, either. I quit my engineering job, spent a good chunk of my life savings on a 3-month cross-country road trip, and discerned where God was calling me. Shortly after returning from that trip, I applied for entrance into the Paulist novitiate. Nineteen-and-a-half years later, I know how wonderfully things have turned out, but I sure didn’t know it back then.
Time passes quickly. Where are we as Christmas of 2023 rushes upon us? Are we feeling stressed, confused, or disappointed by the choices placed before us at this juncture in our lives? As far as I know, the archangel Gabriel has never retired from his job. I believe that he’s still out there, offering people all sorts of life-altering invitations from God. Perhaps this Christmas, some of us here are being invited by God to make surprising choices, choices that defy common sense, choices that will bring peace, new life, and human flourishing here in Boston, choices that will bring peace, new life, and human flourishing to people in Guam living under the threat of nuclear attack, to people on the southern border seeking asylum, and to people in the Holy Land scared, grieving, and struggling to find water and food. Our choices today may be the answers to prayers offered by others centuries ago, or affecting the course of the world for centuries to come.
Will we accept God’s invitation, whatever it may be? When we feel helpless, let’s remember that Paul calls God “the one who can strengthen you.” When we feel foolish, let’s remember that Paul speaks of our God as “the only wise God.” When we feel hesitant, let’s remember the great things that happened because of David’s and Mary’s willingness to say “Yes.”
And when things seem impossible, let’s remember that nothing, nothing will be impossible for God.