Whose tongue is adequate to speak of what we celebrate
today? Whose mind can understand the power and riches and wisdom of God? For
today, the One who is begotten from eternity of his Father without mother, is
conceived in time of his Mother without Father. Today the one who covers
himself with light as a garment, hides himself in the womb of the Virgin. Today
the Word through whom all things came to be, creates a new wonder in heaven and
on earth, by taking flesh of his most pure mother.
Woman has two perfect states which are opposite each
other: the state of virginity, and the state of motherhood. Scripture praises
them both: for the virgin can dedicate herself completely to prayer, and yet salvation
is found in childbearing. But never before now have both these perfections been
combined in a single woman, as they are in Mary, virgin mother and birthgiver
of God. She is the glory of virgins and the praise of mothers.
Our first mother Eve, whose name means “life,” brought
death to all her descendants when she listened to the Tempter’s voice and ate
the fruit and gave it to her husband. But today the second Eve gives herself
wholly over to the will of God, and thereby brings life to all by conceiving
the Word in her womb by the action of the Holy Spirit. When Gabriel announces
to her that she will bear God in the flesh, she answers, “Let it be to me
according to your word.”
Our first father Adam, when he ate the forbidden fruit,
marred the image of God in us and destroyed the likeness by one act of
rebellion. But today the second Adam, the Son who is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn over all creation, restores the image of God for us by
taking on our humanity. “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was
through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the
flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us,
who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
How shall we respond to the news we celebrate today? Once
when our Lord was teaching, someone from the crowd called out, “Blessed is the
womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you.” The Lord Jesus responded,
“Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.” When he said
this, he was not speaking ill of his Mother; he was highlighting what true
blessedness is, and opening the door for you and me to share it. Mary is blessed
because she heard God’s word through Gabriel, and kept it by cherishing it and
acting according to it.
Mary teaches us to hear the word of God: to participate
in liturgy, and reading the Scripture…to give our attention to the mercy and
promises of God. And she teaches us to keep it: not to receive it in vain, but
to let it shape our daily life and relationships with each other. We cannot
give birth to God. That belongs to Mary alone. But to hear God’s word and keep
it belongs to us all.
When my wife and I were in Romania this past summer, we
traveled to the town of Sibiel and saw the museum of glass icons. It isn’t easy
to paint a normal icon; but glass iconography is even tougher. For the layers
of paint must be put down in opposite order, on the back of the pane of glass;
and the image must be done in reverse, so that when the light shines through it
looks like a standard icon.
Something like that happened at the feast we celebrate
today. God reversed the normal order of things to accomplish his holy will.
What is impossible for us, is possible with God. And just as the rays of the sun
shine through the glass icons of Sibiel, so we, with Mary and all the saints, come
to see the light of the the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ his Son.
