Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 1:14 - 20

Did you ever think about how there are two ways to approach life; one is to hang on to what you have, and the other is to progress forward by leaving things behind. It’s true. I can give you a short and incomplete summary of some of my own losses as I moved forward in life. I grew up in Montana and never in my early life had any notion that I would leave the state. But I did; I went to college and Medical school -- and even then believed I’d return someday to live. But I had to choose, and I chose other things over returning to live there. When I was in college I thought about being a professor and getting a PhD. But I gave that idea up because I couldn’t do that and go to medical school. When it came time for speciality training I gave up surgery and neurology in favor of medical oncology. And so it goes. You move forward by giving up options, which is another way of saying, by making choices.

And I can think of people who have not been able to move forward because they haven’t been able to choose. I think of an elderly woman I used to visit before covid came along and you could barely get into her house. She had stuff everywhere and no one to give it to. She had no use for most of it which you could tell because of the layers of dust. And I recognize a little of that in myself as well; I have a large number of tools that I’ve collected down through the years, including a 50 year old Black and Decker jigsaw that my wife got me before our third christmas as a married couple; I used it to build a doll cradles for our two small daughters for Christmas. But even now I can’t go into Rocky’s without feeling the tug of getting another tool.

The people who heard Jesus had been anticipating the day when God would finally come to rescue his people. They lived in a state of tension -- there was now, and there was the world to come. The prophets of the Old Testament dwell on that and insist that God will come to rescue his people. John the Baptist has been proclaiming that the time is imminent, and Jesus takes up the mission, saying that the time is actually here. We have left the old world behind and we are now in the world in which God is breaking through. And Jesus demonstrates that he is the breaking through -- he is the one who brings healing, who opens the eyes of the blind, who binds up the lame, who raises the dead. Anyone who has been listening to the prophets who are being read in the synagogues every Saturday could recognize this -- if they opened their eyes.

And that’s kind of what Jesus means when he says “repent and believe in the good news.” Because Jesus knows that there must be a change in the way we think if we are to take advantage of the kingdom which is at hand. The kingdom is there for the taking -- but choices have to be made. That’s why Mark places the calling of Peter and Andrew, James and John, right after this proclamation.

Mark’s first readers must have been astonished that these four men left everything to follow Jesus. And as you know, there is a very different story of the calling of Peter and Andrew in the gospel of John. We could try to resolve these differences, but it isn’t important. Mark is emphasizing the urgency of answering Jesus’ call. John, who has Andrew going to his brother and saying “we have found the Messiah”, wants to illustrate how the good news is passed from one follower to the next.

Jesus tells Peter and John that he will make them fishers of men. When we hear that we think Jesus is making a play on words, but Mark wants us to remember that this is fulfilling a prophecy. The prophet Habakuk compared the people in need of redemption to “the fish of the sea...without a ruler” and Jeremiah has God saying “Look, I will send many fishermen… to catch them.” Finally, James and John, like Peter and Andrew, must make choices. The four leave behind their boats, their professions, their security; and Mark emphasizes that James and John leave behind even their father to follow Jesus.

So where does that leave us on this third Sunday of Ordinary time? If we want to move forward in our spiritual lives, in our journey to Jesus, we have got to make choices, some of which will hurt, but all of which will make us uncomfortable. It’s not easy to develop new habits and get rid of old ones. Maybe you need to spend less time on the internet and more time with spiritual reading. Maybe you will have to put weekly or monthly reception of the sacrament of reconciliation on your day planner or in your scheduling app on your cell phone -- and then do it. Maybe if you’ve grown cold toward the Eucharist, you need to make a visit to the blessed sacrament part of your routine, or the prayerful reception of the Eucharist once or twice during the week as well as on Sunday. Maybe during this year of Mark you might commit to reading the gospel of Mark, a bit at a time, to really get to know the one he is writing about. But you have to make choices. And you have to leave behind something when you make choices. You have to shake yourself up. Because progress means letting go of some things to pursue other things. And the kingdom of Heaven is here, at hand, but only for those who choose to leave things behind, to make choices, to repent.

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 1:35 - 42

I was speaking with a grandson recently about logic.  His point, if I can condense it, was that simple arguments work better than complicated ones.  In other words, it’s easier to argue against murder than that God is trinitarian.  But I got to thinking, we have a lot of arguments going on all the time, simple and complex; right now there is a great divide in our country over how the government should run.  In our church we have people who have all kinds of reasons to feel that Pope Francis is a heretic, and others who think he is finally a breath of fresh air for our church.  After all, he wants to take care of the planet and has proclaimed “Who am I to judge?” And of course if you go to facebook or twitter you can find raging arguments that sometimes go on for weeks or months.  And I think arguments by themselves never change anyone’s mind.  

In the Old Testament our heroes, the patriarchs, the good kings, the prophets, are described as living in expectation, waiting on what God plans to do next.  And when Israel falls away, or when her rulers apostatize, it’s because they stopped waiting, their thinking became fossilized.  They wanted a predictable god, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who was always surprising -- and if you wanted that God, you had to, like Saint Joseph, be ready to change, be ready to wake up and do what you were told to do in a dream.  And in a sense, that’s what is happening in this gospel story.

You see, John has been preaching and has attracted several disciples.  A disciple is not just a member of a fan club; he is someone who has decided that for a time, he will allow another person to change him.  He has stepped out of his comfort zone and although he doesn’t know where he will end up, he has concluded that something is missing in his life and he will disciple himself to someone who seems to have answers.  Being a disciple means being willing to change because of faith in the person to whom you are discipled, not because of carefully reasoned arguments.  

Andrew and the other disciple have sought out John because they want to change, and John is responsible for their deciding to follow Jesus.  And when Jesus asks, “What are you looking for?” their answer is “where are you staying?”  That never made much sense to me until I thought, they are asking to be his disciples, because a disciple lived with his master, looking after his needs while they sat at his feet and learned from him.  And Jesus’ answer makes sense in this context as well -- he invites them to become disciples.  “Come and see,” he says.  Now imagine this conversation is modern times.  Jesus would say, “What do you want?” and they would say, “We would like to get a degree in theology”.  And he would reply, “Here’s an application, and I will need ten percent of the tuition up front.”  In other words, the conversation is all in the head, not in the heart, and I doubt that Andrew and his friend would be much different after they got the degree.  

In our time, though, we seem to have lost what Andrew and his friend had -- the recognition that there is something lacking in our lives and more importantly, doing something about it becomes our highest priority.  Because what we usually do when we feel something is lacking is we go to our old favorites -- getting stuff, doing things that feel good, making ourselves the center of attention, or doing something that makes us feel in control -- our old friends, possession, pleasure, popularity and power.  Because these are all cleverly designed to quench that feeling that something is lacking in our lives.  

When you read about Jesus’ first disciples, especially in the gospel of Mark, you are struck by how they keep misunderstanding Jesus.  But they don’t leave, they keep coming back, because they trust that only he has the answers to that inner hunger, that inner sense that there must be more to life.  Contrast that attitude with our society today, where despite all the noise, people are never moved to change themselves because of logic, clever arguments, or even screaming; in fact this behavior usually results in both sides becoming less able to change, and each retreating into a silo where there circle becomes smaller and smaller, and more and more thinking the same thoughts.  

Jesus seems to be telling Andrew and his friend that he doesn’t have answers; he is the answer.  And it’s interesting that the same day Andrew decides to become a disciple of Jesus, he goes to his brother and says, “We have found the Messiah” -- and then brings him to Jesus.  Andrew is speaking from his commitment, not from experience, logic, or divine revelation.  He has decided that being Jesus’ disciple is his priority, and has put his faith in the person, not the words, not the miracles, not his own personal experience.  

Jesus is still inviting you and I to “come and see”.  But if we want to be his disciples we have to be willing to let him change us.  Are we really up for that?  

Baptism of the Lord, 2021

Mark 1:7 - 11

We recently enjoyed a three week visit from our nine-year old granddaughter.  We have nineteen grandchildren and love them all, but this one is the youngest and we hadn't seen her in a year so we can be forgiven, I hope, for all the attention she got.  But it got me thinking about love.  When we and her other grandparents first met her, it was obvious that we loved her.  Right now she’s like any nine year old; she knows how to push your buttons, and can charm most people she runs into.  But she couldn’t do that nine years ago; she was helpless, totally focused on her own comfort or lack of it, and required a lot of attention.  And still we loved her.  

I remember a time in my life, back when I was about three or four.  My mother worked as a nurse and my father was temporarily working in a different town after he got out of the army.  I was being cared for by my dad’s parents.  I have fleeting memories of this time, and my parents don’t play much of a role.  Instead, I was aware of my grandparents and of being loved -- unconditionally, I guess.  I don’t remember trying to get on their good side or acting cute or anything like that -- it seemed as though all that was necessary was for me to be myself.  I would sit at the little table and chair that my grandfather had made especially for me, and enjoy my favorite lunch which usually involved some kind of soup.  I would snuggle into a green blanket in my grandparent’s bedroom to take my nap, secure in knowing that my grandmother was in the next room.  I experienced being loved.

As I grew older, and as my granddaughter grows older, most of us will learn that some behaviors are rewarded and others aren’t.  When we are rewarded for behaving, we begin to confuse that with being loved.  Some of us, myself especially, become overachievers because the response of parents and teachers and even my classmates feels a lot like love.  But the danger is that we begin to define ourselves with our achievements, and when we experience failure, it can shatter our self esteem; it feels like we are no longer loved.  During this season of Covid the suicide rate has gone up; alcoholism and drug use are off the charts and depression is a major public health problem.  Covid has taken away the ability of many of us to engage in those behaviors that make us feel loved -- by those who depend on us, by our colleagues in business, and even by ourselves.  The opposite of feeling loved is not feeling hated, it’s feeling superfluous, unimportant, irrelevant.  

The baptism of Jesus always brings to mind the question, why did he need baptism?  Isn’t baptism about the removal of original sin?  And Jesus didn’t have that, for sure.  The Gospel of Matthew, in fact, has John saying “It is I who should be baptized by you” and Jesus replies strangely, “Let it go for now, because it is proper that we fulfill all righteousness.”  And of course the gospels make it clear that John’s was a baptism signifying repentance, not the sacramental baptism that Jesus introduced.  Of course that doesn’t help either, because why does Jesus need to repent?  And is he just going through the motions to give people an example?  I don’t know.  I could give you a lot of theories and even the writers of the New Testament are of different opinions.  But one thing is certain; when Jesus comes up out of the water, he hears the voice from heaven:  “This is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”  And he hasn’t done anything yet.  He’s worked as a carpenter, probably took care of his mother, studied in the synagogue -- he’d led an ordinary life.  Once he became a celebrity, people looked at him and asked, “Where did he get all this?  Isn’t he the son of a carpenter?”  But Jesus himself had heard the voice from heaven and realized, “I am loved.”  And in that moment he knew that he was loved because of who he was, not because of what he had done or what he might do in the future.  Right now in this moment the stunning revelation that he was the recipient of overwhelming unconditional love.  

There are many effects of baptism.   We are given the means to overcome original sin; we are forgiven our personal sins.  We become members of the People of God stretching back to Abraham and Moses and David.  We join a people set apart.  But the Church tells us that we become adopted children of God, we become brothers and sisters of Jesus himself -- and in that moment, and in all subsequent moments, even when we sin, even when we break God’s law, if we listen carefully we will hear those words as well -- You are my beloved.  

And then the Father stands back and awaits our response to his love.  And some of us will walk away and other will be like me, sometimes trying, sometimes failing, progressing here and there, falling back -- and then there will be others who will devote their whole lives to responding to the love that was freely given, like Jesus himself, who gave himself up out of love for us, yes, but primarily out of love for the Father.  Because if you are beloved, you know that nothing can harm you, and that the Father is always there waiting for you to return his love.

We are the body of Christ, and we too hear the voice from heaven, “This is my beloved” In this year of new beginnings let us resolve to respond to this love.  

Epiphany, 2021

Matthew 2:1 - 12

So we finally get to use our wise men, who stay hidden in the sacristy until the Epiphany.  Then they will be out admiring the Christ Child for a week or so and back into their box until next Christmas.  It seems as though the story of the Magi is kind of a footnote to the story of Christmas.  And it seems almost like a myth; they came, probably from the Persian empire; they made their journey based on their understanding of astrology, which isn’t even a science; and they were led by a star and warned by an angel.  And we don’t even know what magi were.  Some authorities say they were advisers to the king of Persia; others say they were astrologers; still others say they were priests of the Zorastorian religion. Maybe they were all three, but after 2000 years we don’t know.  And we have three statues, but the bible doesn’t say how  many magi there were; and we have a camel, but nothing about camels in Matthew’s story.  

Human beings like to fill in the blanks.  Matthew says that the magi came from the east.  We say Persia, because east of Rome was the vast Persian empire, and of course magi is thought to be a Persian word.  But Persia was a big country, encompassing parts of Arabia and India, maybe even western China.  So the early tradition grew that Balthazar was a king from Arabia, Melchior from Persia proper, and Caspar from India.  Later, the three became associated with the known continents, Asia, Europe and Africa.  And another theme was that one was very young, one middle-aged, and one elderly.  Finally, legend had it that each of the magi gave a gift, although Matthew simply says they gave gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In some eastern churches, tradition has it that each of the three magi became Christians and went out as missionaries; they are honored as saints.  

And there is one other thing to say about the story.  We don’t know if Matthew had the old testament in front of him when he wrote his gospel, but a lot of the early Church Fathers did.  They saw that Psalm 72 talked about “kings bowing down before him…” And Isaiah chapter 60 talks about dignitaries coming with camels and gifts of gold and frankincense.

If you are like me, you can’t unthink all the things you learned as a child about the wise men, the three kings, the magi.  There will always be three, they will be young, middle aged and old, they will be european, asian and african; and there will always be camels.  

But in fact, the story of the magi is sort of a summary of the themes of Matthew’s gospel; Jesus is rejected by his own people; the powers of the world oppose him and scheme against him; the Holy Spirit is inspiring the gentiles to seek God through their natural reason and observation of nature; and they are rewarded by being led to Jesus.  The gentiles will become the heirs of the promise made to Abraham and his descendents; and there is an implied promise that in the end Jews and Gentiles will be united in the Kingdom of Heaven.

So perhaps we can learn something from just considering the text as Matthew writes it.  He must have thought it important because it is part of the bracket around the story of Christ’s birth.  The first bracket is the genealogy of Jesus -- showing that he is a descendent of Abraham and of David, and implying that he is the heir of King David, the answer to the promise that David’s reign would last forever.  The first bracket also makes it clear that Jesus is identified with the history of Israel, and Matthew will go on to point this out explicitly in his gospel.  But the second bracket, the story of the Magi, tells us something equally important; not only is Jesus the promised king of the Jews, but he is also raised up by God to be the ruler of all the nations.  The fact that the magi bow down before him is significant; whether they are kings or delegates of kings or simply represent the rest of mankind, they represent what God wants for the world.  When all of mankind accepts the rule of God through Jesus his son, his kingdom will finally come.  

The magi teach us other things as well; they were not Jews, but sought the truth through their study of nature and history.  When they became convinced of what they had discovered, they did something about it.  When they arrived in Jerusalem and it seemed as though their quest had failed, they asked questions.  And they were given the grace to recognize God in the presence of a baby.  

Let us pray on this feast that we, who have been given our faith, who have the scriptures and the church to guide us, will be like the magi and set out to find Jesus in our own lives.  And let us pray that we will recognize the presence of God in each other.   

Feast of the Holy Family, 2020

Luke 2:22 - 40

When I was growing up I never thought of my family as holy, but it wasn’t unholy, either.  It was probably normal for the years in the middle of the last century.  My parents, like many couples in those days, married in the shadow of World War II, as my dad prepared to enlist in the armed services.  He chose to enlist because he wanted some choice in where he was sent.  This ploy worked because he spent the war training to be an army aviator, and just about when he completed his training the war ended.  

My dad was baptized Catholic. His mother was Catholic but a fairly liberal one for the time; his dad did not practice any faith.  But unlike many of his peers, he remained faithful all his life.  My mom had been raised in a German Catholic family where religion was taken very seriously indeed.  I think the common bond of religion played a role in their deciding to get married.  I know it was probably one thing that held them together during many very rough patches.  

Families don’t happen until a child comes along.  I was that child, and after my birth, my mother grudgingly accepted my paternal grandparents, whom she would probably have nothing to do with otherwise, as mother and father-in-law.  I think my mother’s dad always looked down at my dad, because he wasn’t German and wasn’t a farmer.  Her mom and my dad got along well.  And our little family became a part of two other families, sharing, in greater or less degree, vacations, celebrations, milestones of life, and helping each other out because, well, we were all family. 

Many years have gone by, and the family that I was a part of is gradually dying off.  But new families have been formed.  When I meet up with one of my cousins, we usually take up our conversation from where it left off the last time, even if many years ago; but my second cousins are just names on a family tree.  

So why the holy family?  Sometimes we think of the holiness of Jesus’ family as being all about Mary’s sinless perfection with Joseph a half-step behind.  The family is holy because the members were holy.  But Jesus’ holy family is not just Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  His holy family extends to his grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, just like my family did.  And at least some of these were not particularly holy.  If you read the genealogies of Matthew, who names the ancestors of Joseph, or Luke, who names those of Mary, You meet a lot of average people, a few heroes and saints, and a few rogues as well.  And in a sense they are part of the holy family because Jesus is the Holy One.  You know, if I got a call from the son or daughter of one of my cousins, someone I know only because I’ve heard the name, and they needed something, I’d be more likely to ask a few questions and maybe help out if I could, than if that person were a perfect stranger.  Something about being part of a family, however tenuous the link is, lowers the natural barriers between strangers.  And I wonder if Jesus has a soft spot in his heart for his ancestor David who was responsible for the deaths of thousands, who committed adultery and then saw to it that the woman’s husband was killed in battle.  Or Tamar, who seduced her father-in-law, or Rahab, who made her living as a prostitute; or Solomon, who after a great start, ended up building shrines to the gods of his many wives. I like to think our Savior does.

But Jesus came into this world to form a new family, a holy family.  And he even defined that family when he said, “Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

My mother used to say in reference to the Holy Family, “It was easy for them to be holy; they only had one child and he was God.”  But I think my mom and dad created a holy family, because despite all their difficulties, despite the times when they wouldn’t talk  to each other for sometimes weeks on end, despite the emergencies, the illnesses, the many disappointments they caused each other during their marriage, they always clung to Jesus and through him to each other.  And they passed the love of Christ and the desire to be part of his family along to their children, as we try to do to ours as much as we can.  

On the feast of the Holy Family it’s nice to look back at a little nuclear family in Palestine 2000 years ago and imagine them like so many pictures paint them, like so many Christmas hymns bring to mind.  But on the feast of the Holy Family let us remember that as often as we set out to do the will of the Father, we become part of that family of Jesus.  

Christmas 2020

John 1:1 - 18

I’ve held a lot of little babies in my life.  Six children, nineteen grandchildren, and about a hundred children I’ve baptized.  One of the things you notice about very young babies is that they are creatures made up largely of instinct.  They have a limited vocabulary -- their first expression is to cry when something makes them uncomfortable.  Gas pains can make them cry, but a dirty diaper is usually well tolerated.  And you, the parent, never know what the crying is about, so you go through a checklist until your child gets tired of crying or is relieved of the discomfort.  A very young baby is unlike any other very young mammal, fish, bird, or insect in that those other creatures are given instincts that kick in to help them cope with the world; a few minutes after a baby horse is born, he’s up on his feet nursing.  And a baby shark right after it’s born is off looking for food and trying to avoid being eaten.  

But think about a baby human.  Think about Mary and baby Jesus.  He was, after all, like us in all things but sin.  He was a tiny helpless creature largely made of instincts.  What happened? His mother happened, that’s what.   

Some people talk about the miracle of birth.  To me, that’s not the miracle; it looks quite uncomfortable and messy, and I was always grateful that I didn’t have to go through that.  But the real miracle is what happens afterward.  The baby is given to his mother, and she begins to talk to him.  And that’s the first few months -- talking, holding, gazing, more talking; and one day the baby focuses her eyes on her mother’s eyes; and another day the baby smiles back at his mother’s smile.  And then one day in response to her voice, she makes a conscious sound, not a cry, but a deliberate answer to mother’s voice.  And slowly, gradually, lovingly, the baby is drawn out of herself to engage with the rest of the world, by the mother’s voice, the mother’s words, the mother’s gaze, her touch.  And if you are a father, you have seen the miracle of how the person is sculpted from the unformed clay.  And we know that when a baby is deprived of this interaction, this voice, this mother’s word, he will never be successfully drawn out of himself.  

I was told that a local Imam said to his Catholic friend, “if we Muslims believed that God was truly present in our Mosque like you think he is present in your churches we would fall on our faces and never look up.  That’s why I don’t think you really believe what you say you believe.”  At first I thought the Imam had a point.  But then It seemed to me that his idea of God was very different from my own.  My God became human, told us that we were no longer servants, but friends; called himself the bread of life; the Son of Man, the Way, the Truth and the Life;  and he was always telling those around him to believe in him, to have faith.  

And Saint John calls Him the Word, the Word made flesh.  

The Church gives us four gospel readings for Christmas.  The vigil mass tells us about the angel telling Joseph to take Mary for his wife; Midnight Mass has the classic story about the manger, the shepherds and the angels; the Mass at Dawn is about the shepherds visiting the Christ child.  All very appropriate for Christmas.  But the last reading, for the Mass during the Day, is the beginning of the Gospel of John, about the Word that was with God from the beginning, that became flesh, that made his dwelling place with us.  

When human beings think about God, we think like the Muslims, like the writers of parts of the Old Testament, like most people who have by their own reason concluded that there is one God and he is all holy, all powerful, all knowing -- and all we can do is fall down and tremble; he is everything; we are nothing.

But when we hear that the Word was with God, the word was God, the Word became Flesh to make his dwelling with us, we think maybe God is more like that mother of a tiny baby, caring less about being worshipped, being feared and more and more about drawing us out of ourselves, looking at us until we turn our gaze upon him; holding us until we are aware that we are loved; and speaking to us until we speak back.  God through his Son, the Word, engages us all through our lives, forms us, shapes us, takes a creature who is always hungry for pleasure, for power, for wealth, for popularity, and turning him towards that which will truly satisfy his hunger -- God himself, who shows what he desires by giving himself as bread and wine and asking us to consume him, so that we can become what we have eaten. .  

A mother looking at her infant dreams about what he will become when he grows older.  God looks at you and I and dreams about what he wants for us -- to be in heaven with him for all eternity.  Our God is like a mother speaking his word to us until we respond and love Him back.  Our God wants nothing from us except that we allow him to give himself to us.  That’s what Christmas is about.  Look into his eyes, he is gazing at you; listen to his voice, he is speaking his word to you.  

Fourth Sunday of Adevent, cycle B

Luke 1:26 - 38

Suppose you are a woman in a society dominated by men; you are a Jew in an area ruled by Romans who sort of hate you; you are a teenager in a society where old people have a lot more authority than the young; and you are a peasant in a society where there really isn’t any hope for getting out of that class. And now a being who calls himself an angel tells you, doesn’t ask, tells you, that you will give birth to a son who will rule over his father David’s kingdom forever. The only thing keeping you from running out of the room screaming is that the angel has told you that you have found favor with God and that you shouldn’t be afraid.

One of our fellow parishioners told me that the phrase “Do not be afraid” occurs 115 times in the bible. I read another statistic that says this or some phrase like it, like “fear not” can be found exactly 365 times in the bible. Some translations use the phrase, “be not afraid” and one has 70 such instances. However you count, even though there are a lot of commandments we can find in the bible, this seems to be by far the most common.

God speaks directly or through his prophets throughout the Old Testament; he also sends angels there as well. “Don’t be afraid” or something like that, usually precedes a command to do something frightening or impossible; and is followed by the reassuring statement that God will be with the person. For example, in the book of Jeremiah the prophet is told to go out and preach to the people; when he balks because he is young and not prepared, the hears, “Do not be afraid of them for I am with you to deliver you says the Lord.”

God is always telling people not to be afraid, and is always promising in some way or another that He will be there to support them, to help them through the crisis, to make something good about a desperate situation.

So God through his messenger commands Mary not to be afraid. Usually being told not to be afraid is not all that helpful. But Mary, who was at first troubled, now demonstrates that she is not afraid. After being told the destiny of the child she is to bear, she doesn’t say, “That can't be. I’m not rich, Joseph is just a carpenter, what you are telling me seems highly unlikely, if not impossible.” She merely asks, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” When the same angel went to Zachary, his was a response of fear: “How can this be? For I am an old man and my wife is barren.” Kind of like the answer Mary didn’t give, right? Zachary, a Jewish priest who has been praying for a child all his life, exhibits fear that his life will be changed. His answer to the angel is to put forward excuses. And in the context of the rest of the story, Zachary will have nothing more to say until the son is born.

And the angel answers Mary’s question. Her response is not one of skepticism; it’s total affirmation: “May it be done to me according to your word.” In other words, if this is what God wants, let’s get on with it. Maybe Joseph will desert her, maybe the people of the town will stone her, because that’s what you do to adulterers; certainly life would utterly change for her, and soon afterwards Mary visits Elizabeth and speaks those lines of the Magnificat, the longest speech in the bible by a woman, describing the kingdom her Son will bring about. If you ever wondered what the kingdom of heaven is all about, read the song of Mary.

Mary’s life did not magically change; in fact, she probably had more tragedy than most of us, especially those moments when she watched her son being executed in the most cruel way the Romans could think of. I think it’s interesting that nowhere in the bible does it say that Jesus appeared to his mother after his death. All the movies I’ve seen about the life of Christ have a scene where he appears to her, but I wonder if maybe he never did. Certainly he wouldn’t have to, because Mary probably needed nothing to make her faith stronger than it already was; she was still hearing the words, “Have no fear” and still saying in her heart, “Keep doing to me what you said you would do, because I trust you.”

I think that’s the lesson Mary would like us, her sons and daughters, to carry away on this fourth Sunday of advent. For some of us, one or more life-changing events have already happened. For others, they still might come. Through our baptisms you and I are assured that God is always with us -- that’s what Emmanuel means -- and Saint Paul reminds us that if God is with us who can be against us?” So in those moments that threaten to change your life, listen for your own angel, and obey the command, “Do not be afraid” and respond with Mary, “Do to me what you said you would do. I am yours to do with what you will.”