18/12/2022

The readings for this the final Sunday of Advent make a summary from our God of how Son by the power of Holy Spirit came to be born into the home of one of the poor ones of the chosen people in first century Palestine, a province of the Roman Empire which then ruled the "world". There were then many rich and powerful that could have been the setting for the incarnate Son to share in our humanity. But God chose to be poor and first met the lowly people of Galilee which was then scorned as the pits of provinciality by the upper classes who were disdainful of the workers, those who had to do the manual work that they shared with slaves.

God had announced his intention to ultimately complete the revelations he made through his prophets and his care for Abraham's descendants over hundreds of years. We are reminded in this mass that Jesus was descended from Israel's great King David whose tomb was still recognised in Jerusalem. St Paul himself a Jew speaks with human pride of Jesus' lineage but first of all he proclaims Jesus to be the Son of God. This is for all of us a fact that we know by the Resurrection. The same Jesus who was killed on the Cross was risen from the dead by Father, Son and Holy Spirit and still lives on in the same "flesh" but marred by the five wounds and scabbed by the Crown of Thorns with which he was begotten by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the wife of a carpenter in Galilee. Galilee! Galilee of the nations! Can anything good come from there?

Mary's perfect obedience was helped by God in that her being did not share in the  Original Sin bequeathed to all humans by our first parents but Joseph shows us that anyone of us can know God with perfect obedience.  He must have been given a huge amount of grace to be able to accept the message of the angel as coming from God. I wonder how long he lived as Jesus' "father"?

Dear Lord let me grow in Faith and let the sentimentality of viewing you as babe and toddler become the true Love that knows you in ultimate Glory, the perfection that reveals the certainty of our Salvation. The body racked with pain and totally broken and disfigured by the sins of mankind for whom you only have love. May Mary and all the Saints lead the earthly Church into Faith, Hope and Charity that is able to overcome the egos of her leaders making them be true servants of the Lord as are you and Joseph.