May it be done to me according to your word

 This is my homily for today, the 4th Sunday in Advent.  Today's readings are here.

We cooked our own Thanksgiving dinner this year.  That’s not usual for us.  Every single year, without fail – until this year - we go to my parents’ house in Rockford for Thanksgiving, and my mother, still healthy and active in her 80s, cooks an enormous dinner for the family.  This year, she already had purchased a 19 lb. turkey in hopes that the extended family would get together again.  But not this year.  I’m afraid I disappointed my mother by telling her that this year, we’d better not get together; it didn’t seem safe for them.  They are in a high-risk category.  I learned that, at age 59, I still don’t like to disappoint my parents.

As elderly people, my parents are vulnerable.  The pandemic has left all of us feeling vulnerable.  And with good reason.  Even now, as we wait for vaccines to get rolled out on a large scale, all of us still are vulnerable.  And not only to the virus itself, which has infected many people, in some cases rendering them seriously ill, and even has killed some people.  We’re also vulnerable because the pandemic has weakened our economy, which we all rely upon for our well-being.  Many people have lost their jobs, their businesses, their livelihoods.  My wife Therese and I are very fortunate: we’re still employed, but it’s something we can’t take for granted.  

Some folks haven’t dealt very well with their feelings of vulnerability and helplessness.  In some cases, vulnerability has given way to anger, undergirded by fear and even panic: I don’t want to be sick.  Why doesn’t someone do something?  Who will save us?  Some people have cast about for others to blame for our predicament.  If we’re this vulnerable, it must be someone’s fault.

If we’re not used to this feeling of vulnerability and helplessness, it’s worth reflecting how atypical we are.  Because being vulnerable and helpless has been the daily reality for most human beings in most times and places.  

Vulnerable and helpless are words that fit the situation of the Jewish residents of Galilee and Judea at the time of our Gospel reading.  They were living under an enemy occupation, with all the restrictions, dangers and humiliations, large and small, that come from having an occupying army in one’s midst, directing one’s daily life.  We can be sure that many of the Jews of that time were longing for someone to come to save them.  “God, help us!” “God, don’t forget us – send someone to save us!” surely were frequent prayers.

When we think about our own vulnerability and helplessness, it helps us appreciate how vulnerable and helpless Mary and her neighbors must have felt.  And it helps us appreciate what good news it was that the Angel Gabriel brought to Mary, when he appeared to this young woman.  Because the child that God proposed that she bear would save them all.  He would be great, and would be called the Son of the Most High.  Of his kingdom there would be no end.  And all of that came to pass.  That kingdom hasn’t ended – it continues even now.  Mary’s son saves us, too, even today.  

It’s worth noting, too, that the way God has chosen to save us, is to get us involved in the plan.  Mary wasn’t a passive bystander; she had her part to play. And it was a great part – one of the greatest of any human being in history.  Yet God respected her autonomy.  He didn’t make her do this.  He allowed her to choose.

And Mary had every reason to say “No!”  She was betrothed to a man, and a pregnancy out of wedlock would complicate her dreams and her plans, to say the least.  And yet, here was the angel, asking Mary to set aside all her plans and dreams and take another path, a path of great risk to her.

How many of us would have said “Yes”, if we were in Mary’s shoes?  How many of us would have trusted to God rather than clinging to our own familiar way of life in such a situation?  

We love and venerate Mary for many reasons, from the stories recounted in scripture to her Assumption into heaven where she reigns as Queen of Heaven, to her appearances at Lourdes and Fatima and Guadalupe, and even in Wisconsin, near Green Bay.  But surely the heart of her greatness was her assent to Gabriel, “May it be done to me according to your word”.   How simple those words were, but how hard it would be for most of us to utter them.  Mary agreed to make herself even more vulnerable, for the sake of her people, and for us.  

Throughout this season of Advent, which now is drawing to its fulfillment on Friday when we celebrate Christmas, we’ve been hearing the word of God announce the preparations that he has made for the coming of his Son among us.  Those preparations go back thousands of years.  I expect that Mary, too, had prepared to play the role that God would ask her to take on.  We can be sure that Mary’s words, “May it be done to me according to your word”, weren’t spoken in a vacuum; they didn’t come from nowhere.  Surely, she already was a spiritual person and someone who prayed constantly – surely, she already was attuned to God.  And we can be sure that God is preparing us, too, for the coming of his Son into our lives, into our hearts.  Like Mary, our part is to cooperate – to simply let God do with us what he wants.  

Whether we realize it or not, all of us are vulnerable.  We’re helpless.  And God wants to save us.  Like Mary, let us say “Yes” to God.  Let Mary’s words be our daily prayer: “May it be done to me according to your word.”