Homily for Advent 4
Mary and the Incarnation
December 22, 2024
It is
often said that behind every great man is a great woman, and such is the case
with Jesus Christ and His Mother, Mary. We can’t speak about the Incarnation
without bringing up her essential role in bringing the Word-Made-Flesh into
space-and-time. In particular, God prepared Mary for this role in four major
ways.
First,
she is called the theotokos – the Mother of God. But this title of Mary
wasn’t without controversy. In the early 400s, a priest named Nestorius began
to declare that Mary couldn’t be called Mother of God, because wouldn’t that
seem to imply that she was greater than God? After all, God is outside of time
and doesn’t need to be born – how can we call her the Mother of God?
The
Church met at the Council of Ephesus to discuss this question – can we call
Mary the Mother of God, if God is not born? They had to make an important
distinction about Jesus. Jesus has two natures, but is only one Person. Do
mothers give birth to a nature or to a person? Clearly, it’s to a
person. When a mom gives birth, the doctor doesn’t hold up the child and
declare, “It’s a human being!” Of course it is! But who is it? Is it a
boy or a girl, is it Johnny or Sally? So they declared that Mary gave birth to
the person of Jesus, not just to His human nature. And the Person of
Jesus is both God and Man. Therefore it is right to call her “Mother of God”.
Interestingly, when news of this decision reached the ears of the people of Ephesus,
they began to party in the streets, declaring again and again, “Mary Theotokos!
Mary Theotokos!” The good Christians already knew – Mary is the mother of God.
Second, God
prepared Mary for this task through her Perpetual Virginity. She never
shared her body with anyone – her womb was His alone. Even though it wasn’t
officially declared until the seventh century, it was always believed, even
from the earliest days of the Church.
But
wait! There are Bible passages that speak about Jesus’ brothers and sisters. How
can that be? There are two possible explanations. First, there is no Greek word
for cousins or other blood relatives that aren’t siblings. So, the Gospel
writers may have meant that Jesus’ relatives, but not actual siblings, are
referenced here. There is also an ancient tradition that St. Joseph was much
older than Mary, and that he was a widower but had children from his first
marriage. These children would have been half-brothers of Jesus. So regardless
of how they are referenced, we know that Jesus was the only child of Mary,
because the temple of her body was reserved for Him alone.
Third,
God prepared Mary by allowing her to be conceived without Original Sin, which
we call the Immaculate Conception. Consider – if you could create your
own parents, wouldn’t you create them perfect? Of course! How could Jesus dwell
in a heart that was opposed to Him through sin? Thus, for Christ to dwell a few
inches below the Immaculate Heart of Mary, He would need that heart and soul to
be perfectly clean, without even the slightest stain of sin.
In
February of 1858, a young shepherd girl named Bernadette was gathering some
sticks for her family’s fireplace, when a wind rustling the trees made her look
up. To her surprise, hovering in a small cave a short distance away was a
beautiful woman dressed in white. The girl asked this strange apparition, “Who
are you?” The woman replied, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
News of
this strange phenomenon began to spread, until the parish priest called her in
for questioning. He demanded, “Who is it that you saw?” She replied, “I do not
know who it was; she called herself ‘the Immaculate Conception’.” The priest
asked, “Do you know what that means?” But Bernadette, being uneducated, had no
idea what that meant. The priest was shocked that this uneducated girl had just
called Mary by a title that she didn’t even understand! Clearly, she was truly
seeing Our Lady, and to this day Lourdes, France is a popular pilgrimage
destination where people honor Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.
Finally,
Our Lord could not leave His mother’s body to suffer the anguish of the tomb,
so we profess as Catholics that at the end of her earthly life, He took her
body and soul to Heaven without death. This is called the Assumption.
After Christ ascended into Heaven, Mary went to live with St. John who soon
moved from Jerusalem to Ephesus. There she lived for about fifteen more years,
and when the time came for her to end her earthly life, the Holy Spirit
miraculously inspired all of the Apostles to gather in Ephesus to say goodbye
to their spiritual mother. According to tradition, she fell asleep peacefully,
and they bore her body to a tomb that they had prepared. But there was one
Apostle who hadn’t made it there in time – St. Thomas, who was preaching the
Gospel in India, which is quite a distance. So when he returned, she was
already in the tomb. In great grief, he went by himself to the tomb and was
surprised to see that the stone was off of it, and the body of the Blessed
Virgin was being taken directly into Heaven. According to the tradition, Our
Lady’s belt dropped down into his hands, so we still have it, and it is still
venerated in India. How fitting that she who was not touched by Original Sin
would not have to suffer death, which is a consequence of Original Sin!
During
Advent and Christmas, we often focus on Mary – as Elizabeth does in the Gospel
today. But Mary’s entire being is to point the way to Jesus. Immediately after
Elizabeth praises her in the Gospel, Mary launches into her Magnificat –
a beautiful song of praise of God: “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit
rejoices in God my Savior.” Everything good about Mary is for Jesus. This is
why we can go to her as a mother, trusting that she will not distract us from
her Son but lead us to Him. And this is why we can imitate how she completely yielded
her life to Him – she only existed to bring Him into this world. And we, too,
only exist to love and praise Him here and in eternity.