21 December 2013
Saturday of the Third Week of Advent
Mary’s mission, her vocation, described in yesterday’s reading, calls for broadcasting to others what she has been given. So she rushes over to Elizabeth’s house to help her cousin in the final months of her pregnancy. And she carries within her womb the Word of God made flesh. To live in the hope of Christmas means being sensitive to the needs of our brothers and sisters, to bring them Christ.
Mary shows us how best we can do this. If we are wedded to the Holy Spirit we also can bring Jesus to others. Not the same way, of course, but the same Jesus. That is our vocation, our mission too.
The description of world in the first reading may clash with where we find ourselves waiting for Christmas day. Here it is winter. There it is spring. The flower-filled fields pour their fragrance into balmy breezes. It is time for love “in the secret recesses of the cliff.” It is a sketch of Mary on her way to aid Elizabeth. It is an invitation for us to go from human joy to the delight of the Spirit, to the incarnate love of God for mankind. That is part of our mission too, and it is the Holy Spirit who directs us.