Mt. 5: 1-4a; Ps.80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19; Heb. 10:5-10; Lk. 1:39-45
“Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb”. Mary is not only blessed among women but blessed among all humanity for her act of faith having believed in the word spoken.
Blessed are we when we believe and accept the word of God that comes to us in scripture and in the teachings of the church. Blessings come through acts of faith, hope and love. The Lord waits for us to turn to him, seek him, and love him to shower us with his blessings as a father loves his child.
Blessed are you Elizabeth by the Holy Spirit for having believed to give birth to the child John to prepare the way of the Lord as a voice for repentance. John prepared the way with a baptism of repentance but who baptized John? Could John be Jesus’ first baptism in the Holy Spirit in the water of his mother’s womb?
Born of spirit and water, John came into the world ready to lay his life down with the knowledge of a prophet having encountered his savior in his mother’s womb. Blessed are you the unborn children who have died before birth whether by natural cause or by those who chose to end its life for the love and mercy of God is the innocent. Yours is a special place in the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who fulfill the “will” of God by which “we have been consecrated” through our baptism to the Lord. Do we realize we are born with special gifts to fulfill a calling that adds to the kingdom of God? When we live to serve God’s will, the Lord adds to the graces we need to not only overcome all trials, hardships, and even persecution but to live in the glory of God with joyful triumph over sin, temptation, and evil.
Again, blessed are you who believe and then act on that belief trusting in the Lord. We are reborn in baptism to be great disciples as priests, prophets, and kings and no evil can enter when we remain faithful to the Lord.
Blessed is this season of Advent as a time of preparation not only to get our home ready for Christmas but to prepare our souls for the Lord’s coming. The temptation of Advent is to spend our time and energy in the external signs of his coming like a good Martha but it was Mary who chose the better part to sit and be still open to the Word of God.
The better part for a Catholic is taking time to make a good confession, reconciling and making peace with family and friends, coming to Church to give thanks to the Lord for the blessings of this year and giving the gift of self by our love for others.
The blessing of Advent is the giving of Jesus to us and our giving of self to him. In this the word is fulfilled “He takes away the first to establish the second”. God the Father takes away the sacrifice for fulfilling the old law and gives us the new law by example of his son Jesus as a sacrifice of self.
It is in giving of ourselves that we are born to eternal life. This Advent let us be true lovers of God by the many ways we can be a blessing to others by the gift of self that is greater than any material gift wrapped in paper. There was a priest back in the 80’s who would sing the same little chorus at daily Mass here at St. Francis Xavier “Count your blessing, count them one by one…”
We are more prone to keep count of the things that go wrong than all the blessings to go right in our life. Sometimes even when something is a setback it can be a form of blessing reminding us to trust in the Lord, give it to him, and remain at peace knowing all things work for the good of those who serve the Lord.
The psalm prays for the desire to see the face of the Lord and yet we can only see a reflection of his face when we gaze upon a newborn baby or see a mother bird hover over the nest of her babies, or a 90 year old man sit in silent prayer. It is moments like these that we realize there is a greater purpose in life than to simply to go about our business absorbed by the demands of this world.
Blessed are we when our life is set in right order before the face of God. The God who sees all and knows the depths of our hearts will reward his faithful this Advent with his coming to fill us with his love, mercy, and grace. Let us count our blessings and give thanks for the gift of Christ our Lord born in a manger to show us the way.
Recent Comments