December 8, 2024
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary
(II Sunday Advent C)
Lk 1: 26-38
The evangelist Luke frames the Annunciation episode with a series of elements that provide valuable keys to illuminate the whole scene.
The first element we focus on is the reference to the pregnancy of cousin Elizabeth and all that was told immediately before the Annunciation to Mary.
Indeed, our text begins with a temporal clarification: we are in the sixth month (Lk 1:26), and it is precisely the sixth month since the conception of John the Baptist. The angel Gabriel's address to Mary then ends with an explicit reference to Elizabeth and her pregnancy (Lk 1:36-37). On the basis of these words, Mary agrees to the Lord's proposal so that the angel can depart from her (Lk 1:38).
The miraculous event of Elizabeth's pregnancy thus opens and closes the episode of the Annunciation and proves to be important for Mary's response.
And why? What does it mean?
What happened to Elizabeth reveals something fundamental about God and our relationship with him. It says that "nothing is impossible for God" (Luke 1:37).
People seeking salvation have often had the experience of being confronted with something impossible: it is impossible for God to save, it is impossible for God to open the sea, it is impossible for God to forgive, it is impossible for God to return. It is impossible for God to feed in the desert, it is impossible for God to continue to love us.
The history of the relationship between God and human beings consists of many impossibilities, a litany of hopeless situations that nevertheless became possible again at some point.
To the point where we discover each time that what makes man's path to God "impossible" is not so much his distance, but our fear, as we saw last Sunday: a fear that blocks life, the fear that it is no longer possible to accept the gift of God, that it is no longer possible to start something new.
This is the great fear that dwells within us, that our unfruitful life, just like Elizabeth's.
The angel Gabriel also says it very clearly: "They all said that Elizabeth was barren": man can only determine his own barrenness, but Elizabeth's pregnancy says something different, says that nothing is impossible for God.
This is the message that recurs from the beginning to the end of the text; this is the reason why Mary no longer needs to be afraid (Lk 1:30).
The second element concerns the messenger that God sent to deliver the announcement, namely the angel Gabriel. In the book of Daniel and in the biblical tradition, the presence of this angel always has a connection with the end times, with the last days.
This is also the case here: one time ends and another begins. The time of preparation and waiting ends, and the time of fulfillment, the time of fullness begins.
Finally, we dwell on the place where the scene takes place: Nazareth (Lk. 1:26).
Nazareth is a small, unknown, insignificant place from which one can hardly expect anything good (cf. John 1:46). Well, it is precisely from there that the end times begin, the time in which the impossible for human beings will be accomplished.
God chooses an insignificant place because that is His style, the style of His Kingdom, which does not come with power, does not attract attention, but enters into the ordinary everyday life of a young woman from an unknown village.
In all this, Mary enters the scene with a question: How (Lk 1:34)?
How can it happen that the impossible becomes possible and a new phase in the history of the relationship between God and man begins?
All this is possible because the Lord is with her (Lk 1:29), because He always finds new ways to fulfill the covenant He has always wanted to make with His creatures.
And even when they tried to make this relationship impossible, He started again, always in a new way, always from the beginning.
He has always sought one thing: cooperation with man, synergy with the creatures.
For salvation is impossible for man alone, but God cannot bring it about without our cooperation, that is, without our faith, without someone who opens the space of the body and the heart to welcome the presence of God that settles in human history.
+ Pierbattista
