First Reading. II Samuel 7:1-5, 8-12, 14, 16. … «Go and do whatsoever thou thinkest, for the Lord is with thee.»
Responsorial Psalm. Psalm 89:2-5, 27, 29. … «I have sealed a covenant with my chosen one.»
Second Reading. Romans 16:25-27. … «Revelation of the mystery kept secret for eternal centuries.»
Gospel. Luke 1:26-38. » I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word.»
We have arrived at the Fourth Sunday of Advent and with it, at the end of the road traveled in preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord, we have traveled this Advent path with the sole purpose of arriving ready to renew one more year God’s greatest gift to the History of Humanity which is His own Son, Emmanuel. Today, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the liturgy allows us to remember that God fulfills his promises in the long awaited Messiah.
In the first reading, we hear how the prophet Nathan speaks to King David about God’s promise to establish an eternal rule for his people. This promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is a descendant of David.
In the Responsorial Psalm, we are reminded that God is faithful to his promises and that his love and mercy is eternal. And in the second reading, St. Paul tells us about the mystery of salvation that has been revealed through Jesus Christ.
But let us dwell today in a special way on the Gospel. St. Luke gives us the story of the Annunciation, in which the angel Gabriel visits Mary and announces that she will be the mother of the Messiah. Mary, with bewilderment but still with deep faith, accepts her role in the salvation history.
At the heart of this celebration is the crucial role that Mary played. She, a humble and faithful young woman, was visited by the Angel Gabriel, who announced to her that she would be the mother of the Son of God and her «Yes» was an act of total surrender and trust in the divine plan, an example of obedience and humility that changed the course of history.
Mary’s «Yes» teaches us that true greatness lies in the willingness to do God’s will, even when we do not fully understand His plan. Her example of faith and determination at a time in history when, as a woman, she was totally subordinated to the custody of a man is truly disconcerting; Mary inspires us by defying the established social order of her time, only affirmed in the certainty that it was God who spoke to her heart and God does not lie.
How admirable her trust, the trust that we often lack because there is a great difference between believing God and believing in Him. Undoubtedly Mary believed God and her faith was enough to make possible the most important event in history: The Incarnation.
The Annunciation is an invitation to think that God wants to establish a relationship, an encounter with us, that He sends us messengers and messages to make this bond possible, that He approaches our lives in a surprising and unsuspected way, with no other pretension than to find our hearts as willing as Mary’s. And that in this message there is an enormous amount of information about God.
And that in this message there is an enormous amount of trust placed in our lives, He is the God who puts Himself in our hands, within our reach, who makes Himself fragile, defying the stereotypes and comfortable images that we have made of Him.
Let us end this reflection by quoting the words of Father Eduardo Meana in his beautiful musical interpretation «Oh, tierracielo», so that we may understand in it the sublime act of love that the incarnation of the Son of God contains.
O God who has tied yourself with the ropes of time
To our coordinates, to our slow rhythms
To the uncertain becoming of our learning
To the irregular river of our growth
You revealed the depths of this, our existence.
What was ours was in You, what was ours was yours
The human was «more» – God-capable, and sacred
Dramatic and sacred, our «being in the world».
The opaque of the earth in you was transparent!
The opaque was capable of heaven and Word
And it was mirrored in your flesh that we are «earth-sky».
Fragments of infinity in illuminated flesh
Holy kiss of two words
O Jesus Christ, O heavenly earth!
Strong tender, human Lord
Divine ours, Divine ours
Divine and bereft, amazing God and ours
Brotherly and vulnerable, exposed to unloves
Concrete surface of human skin ready
To moon and sun, to hugs, and to whips and blows
Your incarnation is the map of our hope
The human, in your humanity, rises in silence
Destiny and wonder that your body narrates to us
What is ours fits in God and this God fits in what is ours
What unpronounced God traveled in pregnancy
Serene and mysterious of the Mother Maiden
But the God whose back comes by the work
Of sowings and seeds, of nets and fishing?
Holy kiss of two words
O Jesus Christ, O heavenly earth!
Strong tender, human Lord
Divine ours, Divine ours.
May God with us be the truest motive that fills our hearts with joy in this new Christmas.
S. Sandra Milena Velásquez B, TC