Father Omer Prieto WEEKLY REFLECTION On the Word of the Lord and the Message of Our Lady A Guide on Living Our Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary 4th Sunday of Advent (Year B) Gospel: Luke 1: 26-38 Our Ladys Message: Yes, Father (223) Dear brothers and sisters, Ave Maria! We now arrive at the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the last Sunday before Christmas. Luke’s Gospel brings us to the Annunciation (Luke 1: 26-38), which fulfills God’s seemingly outrageous promise to David (see First Reading, 2 Sam. 7:1-5, 8-11, 16). The Annunciation is the beginning of the marvelous unfolding of “a mystery kept secret for long ages,” as St. Paul wrote in the Second Reading (Rom. 16:25-27), bringing us to pray with awe the Psalm: “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord” (Ps. 89: 2-3, 4-5, 27, 29). We will read “Yes, Father” (No. 223) from the book, “To the Priests Our Lady’s Beloved Sons.” In her message, Our Lady invites us to follow her “Fiat” (see Gospel Reading, Lk. 1:26-38), exemplifying the “obedience of faith” made known by Jesus to all nations (see Second Reading, Rom. 16-27). She calls us to entrust ourselves to her, as she brings us to perfect docility to the Will of the Father (223 a). I. GOSPEL READING (Luke 1:26-38) In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. Points for Reflection Though we may have read this passage many times, we gain fresh insights reading it from the perspective of our Blessed Mother. Pope Benedict XVI once wrote about her: “We see how completely at home Mary is with the Word of God, with what ease she moves in and out of it. She speaks and thinks with the Word of God; the Word of God becomes her word, and her word issues from the Word of God” (Deus Caritas Est, 41). Since she is imbued with the Word of God, she can certainly guide us into a profound understanding of the Annunciation. 1. The Angel Gabriel was sent from God. It was told that Gabriel was the angel who appeared to the prophet Daniel to explain the events that would accompany the coming of the Messiah (Dan. 9:21-27). The timetable that he gave turned out to be just about the time he surprised Mary with his visit. At the Annunciation, he brought to fulfillment what he had foretold to Daniel around six centuries ago. 2. “Hail, full of grace!” This greeting was very unusual, because the last woman on earth (before this greeting was made) to be “full of grace” was Eve, “the mother of all living” (Gen 3:20). She lost this fullness of grace, though, when she and Adam disobeyed. Stripped of the supernatural grace that they were given from the beginning, they both found themselves “naked.” When Gabriel added that she has “found favor with God”, Mary realized that she was the woman promised by God (see Gen 3:15 “the woman” and “her seed” ), through whom God will defeat the serpent (Satan). 3. “You will conceive and bear a son.” Mary must have recognized this as an almost word-for-word fulfillment of the covenant promise God made to David as we heard from the First Reading. The words describing the king as God’s own son and his rule as eternal (see First Reading, 2 Sam. 7:1-5, 8-11, 16) are the ones used by Gabriel in his message to Mary: “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High; the Lord God will give him the throne of David, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end” (Lk. 1: 26-38). This promise about the throne of David hung in the air in Israel for hundreds of years. On the day of the Annunciation in Nazareth, it finally reached fulfillment. 4. “How can this be?” Mary was puzzled: “How can this be?” While she knew from the Scriptures about miraculous births in the Old Testament (the list is too long to mention here), her own situation made her raise such a question. It was told in the early history of Christianity that Mary at a young age had vowed herself to God, planning to devote herself to prayer at the Temple like the prophetess Anna in Luke’s Gospel (Lk. 2: 36-38). She would have needed somebody to care for her needs but who was also willing to honor her vow of virginity, and that man was Joseph. Their betrothal mentioned in the Gospel can be better understood in this context. If this was the scenario into which Gabriel appeared, Mary’s question made sense. With the angel’s announcement, her plan was turned inside out as hers was to be a physically fruitful virginity. 5. “The power of the Most High will overshadow you.” Gabriel explained to her that the power of the Most High will “overshadow” her. This word, “overshadow,” was the same word used to describe how God “overshadowed” the Tabernacle, making it His dwelling in Israel (Ex 40: 35). Seeing Marys bafflement, Gabriel said: “Nothing will be impossible for God.” These words say it all. While almost everything becomes impossible for humans, nothing is impossible for God. 6. “Be it done to me according to your word.” Being a woman of Scriptures, Mary knew of those other women in the Old Testament who miraculously conceived children. She would have remembered the angel’s words about Sarah’s impossible conception, nearly 2000 years earlier: “Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Gen 18:14)” Thus, her reply: “May it be done to me according to your word.” She chose to submit to God’s plan, letting go of her own. By this, she risked the possibility of misunderstanding and shame associated with what would appear to others as the breaking of her vow of virginity. Her “yes” (“Fiat”) opened to her a world of complications! However, when she chose God’s way over her own, she right away found her happiness, unlike Eve who found herself desolate with her disobedience. And with Marys “yes” (“Fiat”), she became the new Eve, the “woman” whose “seed” would crush the serpent’s head. 7. Bringing about the obedience of faith In the Second Reading (Rom. 16: 25-27), St. Paul spoke about the Gospel’s proclamation “according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages but now manifested through the prophetic writings.” This means that God from the beginning, has always had a plan; that which “for long ages” was kept secret. God was pleased to reveal it slowly, with the Annunciation as the beginning of the marvelous unfolding of this “mystery.” God is not subject to time. Even when millennia pass by, and no one can figure out what He is doing, God is at work moving everything forward to completion. And what is the point of all this? St. Paul tells us that the Gospel is being preached to all in order to “bring about the obedience of faith.” God’s plan is for us to obey Him because we trust Him, as our Blessed Mother did with her “yes” (Fiat). He knows that obedience that comes from faith is the true source of our own happiness. II. OUR LADY’S MESSAGE: “YES, FATHER” (Message 223) March 25, 1981 Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord a. Beloved children, entrust yourselves to me, and I will bring you to perfect docility to the Will of the Father. b. Just as it was for my Jesus, so too on the plan for the life of each one of you it is written: Behold, I come to do your Will, O Lord (Heb. 10:7). c. Your heavenly Mother wants today to help you fulfill well – and only – the divine Will. This is the Will of God: your sanctification! d. By the gift of your sanctity, you place on the altar of the Lord a powerful force of intercession and reparation. For how many evils, how many sins reparation is offered each day on the part of my beloved sons who, led by their heavenly Mother, journey along the painful way of their own sanctification! e. Do not look at the great evils which are still perpetrated and spread about by the highly refined means of social communication. f. Under the ashes of the immense desert, to which this poor world has today been reduced, many new buds of life and salvation are sprouting. These are the lives, hidden and unknown but how precious, of my priests and of all those children whom I lead, each day, along the road to sanctity. g. Let your yes to the Will of the Father be realized in your daily effort to shun and to free yourselves from sin, to live in grace and in the fullness of love; in the effort to recollect yourselves in the intimacy of prayer and of life with Jesus, of reflection and of the understanding of his divine word; in the interior suffering in the face of the great abandonment and the solitude in which man today finds himself. h. Yes, Father, to your Will, that as in heaven, so also on this earth, your Will alone may be done. i. Yes, Father, that as in heaven, so may it be done on earth, abandoned as it is and never before so threatened as today. j. Yes, Father, to your scorned love, to your outraged presence, to your spurned word. k. Yes, Father, to the gift of your immense mercy which shines forth in your Son whom, through the yes of the Virgin Mother, you have once for all given us, Jesus-salvation, Jesus-life, Jesus- truth, Jesus-fount of divine mercy, Jesus-perfect fulfillment of the divine Will. l. May your yes, beloved children, be placed in the yes which the heavenly Mother forever repeats to her God: for the soon-to-come triumph of my Immaculate Heart in the triumph of mercy and love, of truth and justice. Points for Reflection Our Lady’s message accompanies us on a particular path that came up in the course of our Gospel reflection, the obedience of faith, which she herself exemplified at the Annunciation and which St. Paul cited as the reason for the Gospel proclamation. Here, she points out one specific step to take and the goal that we should aim for. 1. Entrust yourselves to me. Entrustment is the important step that she wants us to take: “Beloved children, entrust yourselves to me, and I will bring you to perfect docility to the Will of the Father” (223 a). Entrustment refers to our consecration to her Immaculate Heart. “When I ask you for the consecration to my Immaculate Heart, it is to make you understand that you must completely entrust yourselves to me, in a total and everlasting way, that I may dispose of you according to the Will of God (287 m). Her Immaculate Heart is capable of doing this, as it is “united wholly and forever” with the Heart of her Son “in the perfect realization of the divine will” (261 g; 288 f). In fact, what her maternal action does is the very the plan that the Heart of Jesus entrusted to her in order to help us carry out perfectly the divine Will alone (177 c). 2. This is the Will of God: Your Sanctification Sanctification is the specific goal to aim for. “This is the Will of God: your sanctification” (223 c). She tells us how we can attain this goal, and how like her and her Son, we too can say our own “yes” (Fiat) to the will of Father (223 g). - Living in grace and in the fullness of love Our Lady invites us to enter into the cradle of her Immaculate Heart for our new birth: the new man of grace and of holiness, of love and of communion, of mercy and of purity, of humility and of charity, of docility and of obedience, of light and of sanctity” (401 f-i). - Intimacy of prayer and life with Jesus Seeing the importance of the life of prayer and of deep union with Jesus, she is calling us to observe faithfully the norms of piety: the Divine Office (especially for priests), meditation, the rosary and the Holy Mass, the point of reference of our day (321 f). - Offering of interior suffering Our Lady forms us to suffering to participate with her in the redemption carried out by her Son. She is an example and model with her motherly suffering in union with the sufferings of Jesus. “I became true Co-redemptrix, and now I am able to offer myself as an example to each one of you in the giving of your own personal sufferings to the Lord. In these bloody times of purification, my motherly task is that of forming you, above all, to suffering (334 f-g). May our Blessed Mother bring us to our “new birth” as we live our consecration to her Immaculate Heart. A blessed Christmas to all! Yours in the Immaculate Heart, Fr. Omer
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 17:33:23 +0000
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