WAITING FOR CHRISTMAS

December 3, 2006

The Church is about to enter her traditional 4-week season of joyful hope and expectation, in preparation to celebrate Christ's birth 2000 years ago. We call this season Advent which means "coming" or "arrival." Children capture well the spirit of Advent, because they always wait for Christmas with hope and expectation of receiving wonderful gifts. The only person who can teach us to live the spirit of Advent better than children is Mary, the mother of the Redeemer. As she carried Jesus in her womb, she understood better than anyone what it meant to wait with great expectation for his birth.

Mary is not only the Virgin Mother of Jesus; she is also his first disciple, the first among saints, and the Mother of the Church, which is Christ’s mystical body. Mary possessed many virtues from which we can draw inspiration today. Let us consider some things that we can learn from Mary about waiting for salvation.

First, Mary is a model of innocence. Many mistakenly tend to equate innocence with naiveté. Instead, innocence is a rare and powerful virtue that flows from rejecting the paths of evil. It is the absence of the desire to do harm, inflict pain, or seek revenge. It is a purity of life, thought, and intention. It results from the decision to seek the truth in life rather than greatness or importance.

Secondly, Mary is also a model of endurance when facing suffering and grief. Her innocence is not ignorance about the ways of a fallen world. It is, rather, innocence that is able to embrace that world and carry the grief of its sins. Grief comes only with suffering, and suffering comes only with time. Our culture is mostly empty of heroes who know grief, because our culture is focused on youth, who have not lived long enough to carry grief.

Mary teaches us how to endure grief by her response to the loss of her son. She did not allow rage to enter her heart. She did not desire vengeance. Nor did she allow herself to feel defeated, which can lead to depression and despair. Mary simply lifted her heart to God, reechoing the “fiat” first enunciated at the moment of the Incarnation of her son. Modern women and men can learn from her to entrust the burden of their despair, emptiness, and brokenness to God, knowing that no human consolation is adequate.

Thirdly, Mary teaches us how to proclaim and celebrate God's victory over evil, even before it has come to pass. The son she lost on the cross, she regained as the risen Lord and Savior of the world. And in his triumph, she triumphed.

We all suffer in life, and there is the tendency to focus too much on suffering and to think that it is the true nature of life. But for the Christian, the true nature of life is to overcome or to triumph over evil, and Mary is the model. Triumph is not triumphalism. It is not strutting, or placing ourselves above others. It is the celebration of the victory of good over evil, of truth over illusion, of peace over war. It is the exultation of God who casts out sin, vanquishes death, makes us one, and gives us a share in his own eternal life.
Finally, Mary is a model of courage and fidelity to God. Living as we do in an age in which many women are seeking to become liberated, Mary is a model of the woman who seeks to liberate others. In assenting to the mother of the Redeemer, Mary decided on a course no one else would understand, only God. She knew unkind questions would arise over her being found with child, since she was not yet married to Joseph, but she chose to be intent on God's will, and on serving him alone, rather than on being concerned about what others might say.

Mary manifested all these virtue by simple words of self-surrender to God, "I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38). May all Christians imitate her spirit of self-surrender to him in great expectation of wonderful gifts to come.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap