Every year on December 17 through the morning Mass of Christmas Eve, we begin listening to Luke’s account of the Christmas story as told by both Matthew and Luke. Today, December 20 we read the story of the Incarnation, the Annunciation to Mary by the Archangel Gabriel that she is to become the Mother of God. (Luke 1:26-38)
Mary questions Gabriel how this is possible, to which the Angel responds: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” (1:35) “In Gabriel’s reply, for the first time in salvation history, God explicitly reveals his Trinitarian nature to a human being: The Most High Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” (Gift of the Holy Spirit by Paul Ragan, p. 87)
Can we be moved by this moment in history when God chose to fulfill the prophecy from of old “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)? Can we take a moment of silence to allow our heart to contemplate this activity of the Holy Trinity? Silence is the ‘language of the Holy Spirit’. The Holy Spirit still has much to say to us today; longs to speak within the silence of our hearts in similar fashion to acting within the womb of Mary.
A lay woman from Mexico, Blessed Conception Cabrera de Armida (born 1862, died 1937, beatified 2019) was a mystic. Her writings are quite powerful and theologically rich and insightful. In her book Priests of Christ, she writes:
The Holy Spirit and only He, can renew the face of the earth and unite hearts with the Word, because He is the ineffable bond of love between the Father and the Son. He is the one who unifies the church, because He unifies the Trinity in Love. He is the one who simplifies, because He is Unity in His very essence. He is Unity because He is Love. (p. 2)
This is what took place in the Incarnation. The Holy Spirit united the heart of Mary with the Word to such a degree that the Word took flesh in Mary and became Man, the Son of God, Emmanuel. This was foreseen by God in allowing Mary to be conceived without sin to prepare her for this lofty vocation as the Mother of God.
In these final days of Advent we are invited to prayerfully ponder these moments of salvation history with faith. We are invited to open our hearts and minds to the presence of the Lord and of the Holy Spirit in our lives and avail ourselves to the grace of each moment that seeks to bring about new life within us.
As I celebrated Mass this morning, with much of the above reflection already at work in my heart and mind, I was deeply moved during the Eucharistic Prayer as I held my hands extended over the bread and wine invoking the Holy Spirit:
Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer II)
While we have not yet arrived at the nativity for the celebration of Christmas, let us ask Mary to accompany us to help us better understand the mystery of God at work in our lives. Let us ask Mary to pray that we may be ever ready to accept God’s plan for us and to embrace it with her ‘Yes’.
Mary is always with us if we have the eyes of faith to see. She is ready to enfold us in her Motherly mantle to protect and lead us to her Son. To aid our ability to ‘see’ this, I will close by sharing with you this picture from our Christmas gathering with the seminarians earlier this week as a reminder that Mary is always with us and she is always with her Son.
God bless!
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