4th Sunday Advent C - Homily 3

Homily 3 -2012

Today's familiar Gospel can be quite instructive if we take the time to ponder and to allow it to touch our lives.

Two Jewish women … in the culture of their time, effectively invisible, simply because they were women; both about to be mothers for the first time.

The older of the two, Elizabeth, had lived her whole adult life as a failure - shamed in the eyes of her contemporaries in the small village where she lived because she was childless, sterile, barren.  For her, the tongues would not have kept silent.

The younger one, Mary, would soon face shame, misunderstanding and indignant condemnation because, though pregnant, she had not even started to live with her future husband.  For her, the tongues would soon be wagging.

Today's narrative shows them both engaged in dialogue, profound dialogue, but there was no one there to hear them; and even, had there been, the two women would not have been listened to because they were, after all, only women.

Elizabeth was filled with the Spirit and, under the inspiration of that Spirit, recognised Mary's still unborn child as her Lord.  At the same time, she was inspired by the same Spirit to recognise the personal specialness of Mary as the one who believed, and entrusted herself to, the promise of God, whatever might be the cost.

Today's brief passage stops short before giving us Mary's part of the dialogue, the striking prayer we have called the "Magnificat", where she outlines clearly her sense of God – holy, merciful, aligned with the powerless and the "nobodies", faithful to his promises and ready always to forgive..

And that's it! Both women eventually had their babies.  We hear nothing more from Elizabeth; and not much more from Mary.

What might we say of them?  … silent, … strong, in a context of uncertainty, inexperience and humiliation – certainly not a word of self-defence or of self-justification.  Two women, one old, one young, sensitive to each other, mutually supportive and both uncannily in touch with mystery, with God.  And both of them, though pushed out to the edges, discounted and virtually anonymous, crucial players in God's plan to turn the world around and to save it from itself.  They both believed that the promise made them by the Lord would, indeed, somehow, be fulfilled.

What might they say to us, here, in this diocese, today, reeling from revelation after revelation of sexual abuse, particularly of young boys, by former respected figures in our Church - priests and brothers; and of the inadequate response of Church authorities?

For some of us, for victims and their families, it is a time, long overdue, of truth coming out, of stories being heard and innocence being vindicated.

For most of us, we can share the relief, yet, at the same time, we feel ashamed, probably angry, and, under the media spotlight, we feel humiliated.  With a Royal Commission soon to begin its investigations, the media spotlight will not be switched off.

Some of us will drift further away from the Church - disillusioned.  Some will be defensive. 

Most of us, I hope, will stay in – bewildered, hurting … but also hoping.

Might humiliation be good for us?  

Strangely, that seems to be the constant message in our Scriptures.  Jesus was clear: Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you …  You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relations and friends, and hated by all on account of my name… Your endurance will win you your lives.  And then there's Paul: I am quite content with the insults, hardships, persecutions and agonies I go through for Christ's sake – for it is when I am weak that I am strong.

But, today, let's turn back to Elizabeth and Mary.  Elizabeth had known a lifetime of humiliation.  Mary had still to encounter hers.  But for both, humiliation became a substantial component of the context where they honed their faith and sharpened their hope.  They did not fight it; nor did they try to wriggle out from it.  They absorbed it, and transformed it.  Not only could they exult in God, but they became key players in God's project for the world's redemption.

There is so much they can teach us as we, too, learn to believe that the promise made us by the Lord will be fulfilled.