There was an interesting news item this week about a soldier. The background: if you have flown in the past few years you have noticed that the airlines make a bit of a fuss over the members of the military. They go out of their way to thank them publically for their service and allow them to pre-board the plane before general boarding. (Do you understand the term “pre-boarding?” I mean, you’re not doing pre- anything. You’re boarding, aren’t you? But I digress) Notice that nothing the airlines do for the military costs them anything. The people the airlines really cater to, the high rollers in first class, get the special treatment. The news story: recently a soldier in uniform was boarding a plane and as she walked through the first class cabin one passenger stood up and said to her, “I’ve been sitting in your seat.” The soldier was surprised and showed the passenger the ticket that said her seat was, in fact, 31B. “No,” said the man, “that is the seat I will occupy so that you can take this seat here in first class,” and he proceeded to the rear of the airplane. The surprised soldier enjoyed all the perqs of first class while the man squeezed himself into a middle seat in the main cabin. Doubtless, the soldier wondered, what did I do to deserve this? Why did this happen to me?
That incident reminded me of the question that Elizabeth asked in greeting Mary. “How does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” We tell the story of the Visitation the Sunday before Christmas to provoke a similar question in us. How is that that God chose to look beyond how messed up we are and send us the best possible gift – God-with-us, Emmanuel, Jesus? Certainly it was nothing that we did to deserve the coming of Jesus – as an old song puts it, God looked beyond our fault and saw our need. The Word becoming flesh was a free gift, unasked and unearned. It was not something that we did, but who we are that made the incarnation, the dramatic breaking into the human story by the divine, possible and even necessary. How did this happen to us? Who are we that the events of Bethlehem unfolded as they did? Well, of course, we are children of God. The Scripture names Jesus as the Son of God but if you think about it, that means that there is something about being human that makes it possible for our lowly nature to bear a divine one. St. Paul expressed it that what Jesus was by nature, the son of God, we are by adoption, the children of God. As the Bible reports male and female he created them, made in the image of God. Why Christmas? Why Jesus? Why us? Because God want to restore the heart of a human being as the place where the love of God dwells on earth.
As the scene unfolds Elizabeth does not focus merely on who she is but also on who Mary is: “the Mother of my Lord” bringing her into the divine presence. God was entering the life of Elizabeth since she was a child of God and Mary was the one who brought God to her as the mother of God. That story is not told for our admiration but for our imitation. We, like the two women in the story of the visitation, are not just to receive God into our lives but also to bring God into the world. The reason Catholics insist on respect life from cradle to grave, the reason Catholics have hospitals and schools and, yes, food pantries, the reason Catholics are involved in prison ministry and social justice and environmental concerns all flow out of our baptismal vocation to bring Christ into the world. We are not only the children of God. We are also the mothers of God, bringing the light of Christ into the world.
Elizabeth ends her encounter with Mary by blessing her: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” What a vivid reminder that all of this lofty talk about being children of God and the mother of God is taking place in a real world situation of pain and trouble. Mary is an unmarried pregnant teen, facing disgrace and subject, in the eyes of the law, to being stoned. Elizabeth is a menopausal woman who has endured years of heartbreak and pity at being childless. The blessing comes, therefore, in trusting that the God of peace does break into lives such as theirs. All of which says that Christmas is not “time out” from all that is going on in the world and in our own lives. There is a temptation to look on this season as the occasion for joy, unlike the rest of the year, so pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. But the whole point of Jesus coming into the world was not to be above the fray but to embed himself into the messiness of all of human life – the joys and the sorrows. We too need the blessing of believing that the words of love and hope that we have heard in the gospels will be fulfilled in our lives. Blessed are we who trust that the Lord’s word of healing is addressed to us even in the midst of a global pandemic. Blessed are we who trust that forgiveness can be received and given even in a family like ours. Blessed are we who trust that even though the arc of history is long that it does bend toward justice. During these days of Christmas we can find blessing in the totality of human life, the good, the bad and the ugly, because it was into lives like ours where Jesus, the gift of God, was born.
