Fourth Sunday of Advent C-2000

Homily

What is the difference between a visit and a visitation?

A visit is when you visit your mother-in-law; a visitation is when she visits you!

It’s an old joke but it has nothing to do with the visitation we hear about in today’s Gospel reading. Mary, newly pregnant herself, goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth who is already six months into her own pregnancy with John the Baptist.

There are two things we should observe. Pregnancy and birth are wondrous and mysterious things. And any birth takes time.

Let us be clear, there is only one creator—God. By the act of conception what we are doing is co-operating with him. God is the author of all life; it is he who brings about this great mystery.

We owe our lives to him, if he lapsed in his attention for us for one minute we would cease to be. So God is both the creator and sustainer of all life. The gift of our life is an act of love on his part—that out of nothing and for no reason other than love he brought us into being.

This great feast of Christmas is about a birth. I was watching the children in the school performing a mimed nativity play on Wednesday morning. Not that many of them really understood the mechanics of birth and naturally these were not made explicit but the children were nonetheless involved and paid great attention to all the events surrounding Christ’s birth.

It is good that we mark this feast so well. The fact that there are so many customs attached to it brings it even more into prominence. Christmas draws attention to the importance of birth, something that is a matter of great consequence to our world today.

We hear about human cloning—a politician said that fifteen years ago this was science fiction today it is practical possibility. We hear about all kinds of sophisticated methods of contraception and the so-called morning after pill is about to become freely available. Abortion is taken for granted and some groups express the opinion that it is irresponsible not to abort a handicapped child.

All these things undermine the sacredness of life. And life is sacred because, as we have said, life is God’s creation.

The debate about when life begins has special relevance amidst all these technical advances. The Anglican Bishop of Rochester said on the radio recently that by stating that life begins at conception the Catholic Church today was out of touch with its tradition because St Thomas Aquinas and others had stated that ensoulment doesn’t take place until fourteen days after conception.

The debate about when life begins is special relevant but is also in some sense futile—no arbitrary line can be drawn. The point is that we Catholics have a special reverence for life—even if all we can say is that it is human life in potential. So even at the very earliest stages human life must be treated with great reverence and respect.

If we are to look to scripture for an insight into these matters we need look no further than the account of the Annunciation. The Angel Gabriel said to Mary: You will conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. The act of conception is a sacred moment and in a real sense it marks the beginning of life—not necessarily recognisable or sustainable human life, but it is a beginning.

These two pregnant women in our Gospel reading are full of joy and concern for one another. Mary surely goes to visit Elizabeth because of her advanced age and the attendant dangers of a pregnancy so late in life. This solicitude is a clear sign of Mary’s goodness.

Through the influence of the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth recognised that Mary was the mother of Christ. She greets her in the words we are so familiar with in the Hail Mary. And Mary responds in the equally familiar words of the Magnificat.

These two women understand the miracle of conception and birth. They do so because in each case there was a direct intervention of God in a truly exceptional way. Luke tells us that both were informed of this fact by the words of an angel—they each had a direct message from God telling them so.

But God uses the extraordinary to highlight the significance of the ordinary. The fact that these two women had this most extraordinary intervention only demonstrates that in each case our own lives were also the result of an intervention by God—what you could call an ordinary intervention if you like.

It is from this understanding that the Church takes its position on all these life issues that we have mentioned.

The second point I wanted to highlight in today’s liturgy is that births take time. We know quite well that it takes about nine months from the time of conception for a child to be born. But we also know that this can feel long or short depending on all kinds of circumstances.

But everything does take time, very little happens in the world or in life without some kind of lead up. The coming of the Messiah took a very great deal of time. The scientists can give you all the figures and dates of when the world was created and when human life most likely evolved.

Scripture also indicates a long passage of time during which God made his will known on a number of occasions to certain individuals—Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc. He did this in order to move mankind on in his understanding of God’s plan for the world and to encourage us to develop our understanding of God.

There was a very long lead up time to the appearance of Jesus Christ—a long gestation you could say. We experience the same in our lives. We need time to work things through with God. We need time to fully recognise just how much he loves and cares for us. It takes us a long while to work out just what he has in mind for us.

At particular moments we might recognise the hand of God in our lives. Maybe it was when we finally decided on our partner in marriage, or came to the conclusion we had a priestly or religious vocation. Maybe it was in the birth of a child, a change in job circumstances, or the death of a parent. Maybe it was a moment in prayer, the experience of a sacrament, advice in the confessional, wise words from a friend or relative at a critical moment.

Each of us has surely already recognised the action of God in our lives on particular occasions—otherwise why would we be here in Church? But these actions of God are not finished, they were not simply things that happened in the past and are long behind us.

No, God continues to work with us and for us. He takes the long view and there are periods of seeming barrenness, seeming unimportance, seeming aloneness. But these are all part of that gestation period which is our life on earth. We were born into this world and we will be reborn into eternal life.

Every now and then like John the Baptist we leap in this womb of ours, which is our life on earth. Every now and then we recognise God’s presence, just as John recognised Jesus’ presence, and we leap with joy. But life is constantly moving on and God is always with us.  He caused us to come into being, he sustains and feeds us, and he will welcome us into life eternal.

We celebrate a birth at Christmas—a birth, a life, a death and a resurrection.