This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
A fundamental dynamic of salvation history, that is, a dynamic of God’s interaction with the human person after the fall, emerges as a theme in all the readings today. It is the dynamic of the human person experiencing humility and humiliation as a condition of reaching the destiny of high exaltation to which God calls every person redeemed by His son. The experience of the dynamic humiliation-exaltation yields a third reality, which is profound gratitude on the part of the redeemed.
In the first reading, Hannah experiences for a long period the humiliation of sterility. God answers her pleas for a child, and in gratitude she consecrates the boy to God, quite literally making a gift of him at the temple.
Hannah prefigures the reality of the Blessed Virgin Mary expressed so beautifully in the today’s gospel. Mary needed no humiliation event to come into intimate contact with her own lowliness. She was ever-conscious of her smallness before God. It is not the suffering of humiliation that pleases God as He instructs us; He merely wants us to be fully aware of our littleness, as the key to understanding our dependency on Him for our happiness and seeking a relationship with Him above all else. Mary had this awareness without the need for any bitter lesson.
As such, Mary’s gratitude is arguably even more pure than that of someone like Hannah, who passed through the experience of bitter humiliation; Mary had made perfect peace with her littleness from early on, which made God’s exaltation of her that much more of an unexpected surprise.
To the degree that we come into intimate contact with our smallness before God, and our need for a close union with Him for our happiness, to that degree the beauty of Mary’s Magnificat resonates with us.
As is often the case, today’s psalm sums up the lesson well for us:
The well-fed hire themselves out for bread,
while the hungry batten on spoil.
The barren wife bears seven sons,
while the mother of many languishes.
As we prepare for Christmas in the final days, we foresee the dynamic from today’s readings play out with the extreme of beauty in the mystery of the Incarnation. It is Jesus, God Himself, who enters into the dynamic of humiliation directly, by taking on flesh and ultimately suffering the epitome of degradation at the hands of sinners with His Passion and death. And the beauty of it is, He does so not for the benefit of any personal exaltation, but that we may come to be exalted. He takes on the dynamic of humiliation for us.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Speak with Our Lady, in this time before Christmas. Ask her to help you appreciate the dynamic of humiliation and to open your heart to it. Ask her to look after you as your Mother during the necessary period of humiliation that this life involves, if we are to be exalted with her Son–so that it does not embitter your heart against God, but leads to a profound awareness of your need for Him.
Follow the Author on Twitter:Follow @mvhaywilliams