4th Sunday Advent B - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2008 

If Mary really appeared to us, and we were able to hear her and not just the projections of our own minds, what might we hear?  I don’t know.  But I can tell you of the projections of my own mind.  Before that, though, … when you interact with Mary, what is your sense of her age?  For me, I sense her as about my own age: a communication between two adult people.

So, if I could really hear Mary, I think she might say to us: “Be like me! a virgin – not so much physically, but spiritually. Learn to be empty! Unclutter your minds and hearts! Cut loose from all those tumbling, cloying, strident, shrieking desires you learn from others, and listen to those deepest, truest desires arising from your true selves that proceed from the God who, at this moment, is even now creating you!

 “Gabriel said to me that God was with me.  He said I was highly favoured.  The same is true of you: God is with you, too; You are highly favoured.  Believe it! Hear your own heart calling out to be loved.  Just to be loved, not for what you have, or for what you have made of yourselves, or what you hope to make of yourselves, but simply for what you are, for who you are. Be - uncluttered, empty, virginal, like me.

 “Gabriel said I would conceive and bear a son.  I did.  I gave life – I gave life to the one who was God’s Son.  I am mother.  I carried him physically in my womb for nine months.  I carried him spiritually in my spirit every day of his life.  He is still within me.  He shared my life.  I now share his life.  He drew life from me.  Now I draw life from him.  And he is within you, too.  He has made his home in you.  You share his life, just as I do.

 “He is within you now so that you, too, may give life.  Be virginal like me.  Keep your heart uncluttered.  But also, be life-bearer like me.  Hear your own heart calling out to give love.  Bring life, and joy, to the world.  Let his love fill your heart, and overflow from you to others.

 “I said to God’s messenger, to Gabriel: Let it be done to me!  I trusted God; I grew like God; my heart and God’s heart came to beat to the same rhythm.  Like I did, say to God: “Let it be done to me! … Your will be done!”  Trust God.  Believe God’s love.  Let yourself become like God.  Let your heart and God’s heart beat to the same rhythm.  Like God, learn to love the world, the broken world, the world that needs so much to be loved; the world that turned on him and murdered him.  What a need it has for love, for healing, for hope.

The world needs to know what is possible, that there is another way, his way.  It needs to see that way of love in three dimensions.  It needs you to show it what is possible.  I brought him into the world.  I nourished him, I nurtured him.  I shared with him all I had and all I knew.  Don’t let his coming be in vain!”

If Mary really appeared to you, do you think that she might talk like that to you? But then, she doesn’t need to appear to you for you to know what she is like and how she thinks.  You have read the Gospels.  This Advent time, when you pray to her, be still, be quiet.  Don’t do all the talking.  Don’t be forever asking.  Just listen.  Be still … your heart and your mind as empty as possible, and just be with her.