Fourth Sunday of Advent

Dominica IV Adventus A

22 December 2019

 This holy season of Advent calls us to silent and patient waiting for the celebration of the birth of Jesus; it likewise calls us to expectation for his return in glory at the Second Coming.  The arrival of God in our flesh at Christmas and His promised return in our flesh at the end of time are truths of our faith that need our meditation.  The Collect, the first prayer of the Holy Mass today, is the very same prayer that concludes a devotion called the Angelus.  The Angelus prayer fosters our faith in the Incarnation.  I want to highlight it today in order to promote its practice as part of our Catholic culture.  The Angelus is a simple verse and response prayer, together with praying the Hail Mary three times, that highlights those moments of the Archangel Gabriel’s message to Mary, her yes to God’s plan, and the conception of Jesus in her womb.  The Angelus is traditionally prayed three times each day, at 6:00 am, 12 noon, and at 6:00 pm.  Church bells traditionally have a special ring at these three times to mark the praying of the Angelus.  Since our bell tower is in the city near neighbors we try to be a bit considerate and so our bell tower here rings at 8:00 am, 12 noon, and 6:00 pm.  If you have ever noticed and wondered why the ringing at those three times clearly stands out as different, that is the answer.  It is a call to us to pray the Angelus.  Any good Catholic prayer book would have the Angelus and I am sure you can find it online.  I encourage you to learn it and to pray it.

  Why is it important to foster devotion to the mystery of God’s incarnation?  To answer that, and in the briefest of summaries, I want to suggest three key elements in God’s plan for the salvation of the human race, creatures He has made as both body and soul.  Those key elements are (1) man and woman; (2) union; and, (3) flesh.  They are critical aspects of the plan for salvation and they are intricately related to one another.

  First, man and woman.  In the act of creation, the Book of Genesis speaks to us the truth that God made human persons in two broad categories.  He made them distinct yet complementary.  “Male and female he created them,” the Book of Genesis says (Gen. 1:27).  He made them for one another.  That is clear from the very design of the bodies of male and female and clear by the design of the dignity of sexual love that God made to be good as a participation in His own creative power.  The creation of male and female, and that God the Father employs it as well in salvation history by having the Savior enter the world as a man who learns from a father and a mother, tells us something of the truth and the irreplaceable value of the two sexes of mankind and their related gender identities.

 Secondly, union.  The story of salvation history shows a personal God who is madly in love with His creation and who, having made mankind in His image and likeness, destines us and desires us to have relationship and communion with Him.  He promises that time and again and the call to union is in the mouth of the prophets all through the Scriptures.  Being made in His image and likeness, then, we reflect and echo this relational capacity.  We are made for relationship and union.  We are made for union with God.  We are also made for relationship with one another.  We experience the importance of union in that we are not made to be alone (cf. Gen. 2:18).  We experience union in varying degrees on the large scale of human society and down to the smaller scale of intimacy.  In this category of union as part of the plan of salvation, I want to highlight only one very particular and specific type of union that is clearly used by God in His plan to undo the disorder ushered in by Original Sin.  This very specific union is the nuptial union, that of marriage, which has been enshrined as a sacrament in Holy Matrimony.  God makes use of the one flesh union of man and woman to be a sign of the permanence of His union with creation, to be a sign of His fidelity in His promises to us, and to be a sign of the fruitful, life-giving nature of His love.  This unique relationship of union between man and woman is used by God in salvation history such that His Son in the flesh is born within a holy marriage.  This teaches us of the truth and the irreplaceable value of marriage as a reality made by and received from God and not manufactured by man alone.

 The third critical aspect of God’s plan for salvation is flesh.  God indicates the dignity of human flesh made in His image and likeness by blessing Adam and Eve, and calling them to be fruitful and multiply.  This gives a clear moral itinerary for marriage and a clear guide for how spouses should live that vocation still today.  And most specifically, after the preparation of prophecy over centuries and the formation of a people, God would show the prominence of flesh in His saving plan by the mystery we ponder in this holy season and which we will celebrate anew in the Christmas season about to begin… that of the Incarnation.  ‘Incarnation’ literally means the taking on of flesh.  We profess belief that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the eternal Son of God, took on our human flesh in the fullness of time (cf. Gal. 4:4) as salvation history came close to its most climactic moments.  That God created flesh and called it good, that He told man and woman within marriage to be fruitful and multiply, and that He sends the Savior in our flesh tells us of the truth of the dignity of human flesh and the dignity of human life formed in the womb.

   So why am I highlighting these three aspects of (1) man and woman, (2) union, and (3) flesh as key elements in salvation history and key realities of the Incarnation, of which we are reminded in the prayer of the Angelus?  Because if you train your eyes on spiritual realities as we must, and if you avoid the tendency to think of reality only from a secular and non-spiritual perspective, then you note that these three key elements of salvation history are precisely things under attack most violently today.  And if we admit that, we can’t help but remember that we are in the midst of a spiritual battle.  Those three key elements of salvation history reveal three places of critical attack from secular and demonic forces in our time.  (1) The first key element of salvation history, God dignifies and makes use of the reality of man and woman.  Today, elitists and those they mislead think that sex is purely a social construct and they insist that biology and anatomy are not determinative or stable.  They want to obliterate all meaningful distinctions about sex while claiming that people of faith are the ones who are unscientific.  Change and mutilate a body all you want but the truth of its biology and chromosomal make up bespeaks the lie of modern gender ideology.  (2) The second key element of salvation history, God makes use of the exclusive union of husband and wife in marriage.  Today, everything that promotes violating that union or severing it, or manufacturing same-sex unions as equivalent, or any other construct that does not uphold the truth of the exclusive union of one man with one woman… these are violent attacks at the root of God’s creation and attempts to disfigure what God has done in salvation by means of marriage and family life.  We are in a spiritual battle.  (3) The third key element of salvation history, God creates human flesh and he uses it to send us a Savior, His Son, who will carry our human flesh into the saving sacrifice that brings salvation to us.  The hatred of human flesh that is at the root of viewing pregnancy as a disease to be prevented, that is present in the promotion of contraception, that is literally active in the destruction of unborn human life, and all the other modern means of manipulating vulnerable human life… here we see another critical theatre of battle for the soul of mankind and the soul of our world.  These places of attack, so common, popular, and viewed as enlightened in our society, have spiritual and eternal consequences.

The Gospel passage today gives us a glimpse of each of these three key elements of salvation: a man and woman, Joseph and Mary, distinct yet complementary; the union of marriage (betrothal was real marriage in Jewish culture; we need to dismiss the silly interpretations that Joseph and Mary were only engaged); and the flesh, for Mary was found with child by the Holy Spirit.  We are called to be witnesses in a battle that is leaving the good world God made more and more disfigured.  Our faith and our advancing of the truth has value in this battle.  Don’t underestimate the value of a devotion like the Angelus, for it trains our eyes, our hearts, and our minds, away from the tendency to think only of this world and of material reality. It helps us marvel with wonder and child-like joy at the presence of God and His activity in our midst, and with our cooperation, to renew the world!   And the Word was made flesh; and dwelt among us!