Fourth Sunday of Advent - Cycle B

2 Sm 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16
Rom 16:25-27
Lk 1:26-38

The readings of today, and the closeness of Christmas, thrust us into reflections on the Incarnation. Christmas is not only the Feast of Christ’s birth, but the celebration of the entire mystery of God taking on a human nature – beginning with the event narrated in today’s Gospel, whereby Christ was conceived within Mary’s body. The passage quoted above for today’s suggested bulletin insert can likewise be the basis of the homily. God redeems us by joining every aspect of our lives to his. God even becomes an unborn child. Human life was already sacred because it always was and is God’s creation, made freely from his love. But in the Incarnation it takes on an even deeper meaning and sanctity, because human nature is forever united with Divine Life. This affects all who share human nature, even the children still in the womb. That is why Evangelium Vitae can make the following two assertions:

“Life, especially human life, belongs only to God: for this reason whoever attacks human life, in some way attacks God himself” (EV n. 9).

“By his Incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every person. It is precisely in the "flesh" of every person that Christ continues to reveal himself and to enter into fellowship with us, so that rejection of human life, in whatever form that rejection takes, is really a rejection of Christ” (EV n. 104).

The fact that Mary was not expecting to carry a child, and was troubled at the greeting, also leads us to reflect on the Providence of God. No unexpected pregnancy has ever affected history so profoundly, and no woman besides Mary is a better example to those who feel they cannot handle a pregnancy.