- Feb 5, 2002
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This Sunday is the Fourth Sunday of Advent Year C and each year when we face the last stretch before Christmas, the Church’s focus shifts to Our Lady.
For children, the week before Christmas is a time of unbearable anticipation. For adults it’s a time of intense preparation. Holiday travel makes life harder on both of them.
For Mary, it was all of that, only worse. No one ever anticipated Christmas more, had more to prepare, or more stressful travel to endure than the woman who did it all for the Son of God for the first time.
First: The Church’s readings are plainly suggesting that we should approach this difficult time like Our Lady did.
The Gospel tells the story of the Visitation, and we find Mary not just away from home serving her extended family, but bringing peace and joy to Elizabeth through her connection with Christ.
This is the mode we often see Mary in: on the move, bringing people to Christ by bringing Christ to people. When Christmas comes, she will be away from home again, an oasis of peace in the busyness of Bethlehem and an island of light in the darkness of the ancient world — but in the Extraordinary Story of Jesus’s life she does the same thing at Cana, on the road, at the cross, at Pentecost and then throughout Church history in apparitions from Lourdes to Guadalupe.
Continued below.
For children, the week before Christmas is a time of unbearable anticipation. For adults it’s a time of intense preparation. Holiday travel makes life harder on both of them.
For Mary, it was all of that, only worse. No one ever anticipated Christmas more, had more to prepare, or more stressful travel to endure than the woman who did it all for the Son of God for the first time.
First: The Church’s readings are plainly suggesting that we should approach this difficult time like Our Lady did.
The Gospel tells the story of the Visitation, and we find Mary not just away from home serving her extended family, but bringing peace and joy to Elizabeth through her connection with Christ.
This is the mode we often see Mary in: on the move, bringing people to Christ by bringing Christ to people. When Christmas comes, she will be away from home again, an oasis of peace in the busyness of Bethlehem and an island of light in the darkness of the ancient world — but in the Extraordinary Story of Jesus’s life she does the same thing at Cana, on the road, at the cross, at Pentecost and then throughout Church history in apparitions from Lourdes to Guadalupe.
Continued below.
This Sunday, Finish Advent Like Mary: 5 Takeways for the Fourth Sunday, Year C
Mary is the patron saint of people who have a hard time anticipating, preparing or traveling at Christmas.
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