Readings for Advent IV: Micah 5:1-4a I Hebrews 10:5-10 I Luke 1:39-45 (46-56)
“A love song to God”
“And Mary arose in those days and went in haste to a town of Judah in the hill country and, entering the house of Zechariah, greeted Elizabeth. And it happened that when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And in a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Behold, as soon as my ears heard your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. Happy is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be fulfilled.” And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked upon the lowliness of his servant. Behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy remains for generations upon generations on those who fear him. He has done mighty deeds with his strong arm and has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has cared for his servant Israel and remembered his mercy, as he promised to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever.” And Mary stayed with her about three months and then returned home.”
With today’s Gospel text we have come very, very close to Christmas. Turning our attention to Mary and her imminent labor, we breathe in one breath with the world. Right now, life out there, beyond the window, is reaching the culmination of its Christmas anticipation and hope; moreover, the exhausted and glassy eyes of desperate shoppers are becoming easier to find with each passing day. Sometimes you only need to look in the mirror. The big day is approaching! It is now felt at every step!
But interestingly, the Gospel speaks even more about going out “out there”. The story of Elizabeth and Mary sounds like a love song to God. The age-old longing for liberation and security is finally fulfilled. We are invited to listen to a story about a future that is met with conviction and delight. These two seemingly impossible pregnant women – the barren wife of an aging priest and an unknown virgin without highborn blood – began a song of praise that has continued for more than 20 centuries: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” Wonderful words – there is no song that rings out in shops and shopping centers during this gift-hunting season that could even slightly resemble this song of praise, which in Latin is called: the Magnificat. (Magnificat, magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.) Do you remember when the shops first began to play Christmas songs? Did you, like me, flee outside, because the intrusive “Jingle Bells!” grated in your ears like a metallic sound rather than the soulful melody for which the heart and mind long? Did you also dash into a shop as if into a refrigerator, in which it is impossible to stay for long, and quickly, having bought what you needed, flew off like a stung bee? At this time of year I often think, what is the difference between the heartfelt Christmas chorales that one wants to listen to and immerse oneself in, and those holiday-season trills that cause shudders and a flight syndrome?
Meanwhile, both worlds – the one out there and the one in our souls – in this time of stress and fear desperately seek that pure word of joy and hope. Because in the midst of all this Christmas spirit that is around us, there is also much pain. We know that for many millions in the world this time is grievously painful because of looming dangers, the horrors of war and uncertainty.
At the same time, this is no surprise. Worldliness usually runs up against a strange short circuit. Emptiness usually has to be embellished, decorated or painted with unnaturally bright colors to look impressive and catch the eye. This is because, when the world looks at itself, seeking fulfillment; when the world tries to find a reason for celebration and joy only within itself, it cannot do so. The world is able to find the emptiness that it desperately strives to fill, cramming all sorts of things into it. Examples are not far to seek.
But there is no point in pointing fingers. The same applies to us as well. If first and foremost we look only at ourselves, at who we are, what we are able to do, what we will get for it; if first and foremost we look at our own fulfillment, joy and hope, then we can be left empty forever. Because in this world alone, in us alone, there is no such deep and lasting good news.
Mary and Elizabeth sing loudly about a completely different joy and hope. Because their joy is directed precisely at the pain of the world – at our pain, which at this time weighs on the mind and heart of each of us, personally and globally. Both women rejoice, both sing – yet neither celebrates her own success. Neither sings about what she herself has achieved; or about what she has deserved; or about what the world does for her, nor because it is simply the time of year when people are supposed to sing, when there is nothing more sensible to do than buying gifts and stressing out.
Mary and Elizabeth sing because they have been given a new life to share. Each of them sings because what nature and the world called empty is suddenly filled with life – a life that one day will shake the foundations of the world; that same world that has no idea what is happening.
These two women rejoice, and we together with them, because God loves us ardently enough to act. Their joy and ours resonate perfectly. Their song and ours can be sung only because God loves us ardently enough to come to us – the emptiest and the most overlooked, the least of all. God comes to plant in us and in our world his own life, God’s own hope and God’s own promise of peace. Our hope is in the name of the Lord. And that usually never happens there, then and in the way that we imagine or plan.
But for all the beautiful paintings and heavenly music inspired by Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, one thing is clear – back then no one noticed, because no one was interested. By Murphy’s law – it is not loud noises that carry God’s word out into the world.
And yet, it somehow seems to me that what God wants to do for us at Christmas is exactly what he did for Mary and Elizabeth. Does God not want to place hope and joy in our hearts and lives? Real hope – the kind that does not become a cent cheaper and that even after the holidays does not go on clearance, does not wear out, does not fade and does not stretch out (or shrink smaller). And it really does seem that this Christmas God wants us, just like Mary, to carry within ourselves and to give to others nothing other than the life of the Lord. What if that is what God wants?! What then?
For Mary and Elizabeth to receive this gift, they did not have to go shopping. Quite the opposite – they had to stay at home – quiet and calm. They had to listen to voices that no one else could hear; voices that said impossible things. Both of them had to believe that somehow (who knows how) God really would be faithful.
This requires a special vision and a special discipline – to discern the signposts of hope and to uncover the goals of joy. In our world and in our lives we really do need eyes that trust and hearts that believe that one can find true reasons to sing, to magnify the Lord and to give thanks to him. But it is possible, and we ought to do it, if we understand what Christmas is really about.
It may be that what Mary and Elizabeth would have to say to us this Christmas is hope and joy that echoes in a love song to God, and that the outside world tries hastily to fabricate, buy or imagine. This month it is, in fact, a gift that is usually given in silence in places where we usually least expect it, in a way that even seems quite impossible to us.
It is quite possible that the most rewarding occupation in these last days before Christmas is waiting, listening and trusting that God will lift up the lowly, the overlooked and the humiliated. And it is just as possible that he will give us what the world neither gives nor recognizes. And what if it even happens as it happened to Mary and Elizabeth, that a new life, a new living, begins to grow within us, one that is absolutely able to change us or to change something within us beyond recognition, so that, without noticing it ourselves, we begin to sing a love song to God? Then one could listen to such a song without tiring of it, even for a whole lifetime!
Rev. Gundega Puidza
(image: Arta Skuja, “Light from Light” IV)