“The
Word of the Lord came to me thus,” says the prophet. And each of us, I suspect,
have a word, a passage of Scripture that has torn our hearts open. Indeed, when
the Lord speaks, things get rearranged, there is always a need for
reorientation. So it is that today’s Gospel remains very significant for me.
Many years ago, I read these words in the grey light of a December morning as I
sat in the Cottage. For months I had felt an inexplicable longing to be a monk
in this monastery. But how could it happen? I was scared, terribly confused but
somehow the desire would not leave me. And that morning as I read the words of
Saint Elizabeth to Mary: “Blessed is she (me) who believed that the Lord’s
promises would be fulfilled,” very deep down I felt loved and understood, reassured
and even chosen. (Only God knows why.) My fear would be useless. God could accomplish
this for me, if I would only trust him, give him space and time. God wanted me
here more than I knew.
God is
always toward us, seeking us relentlessly. But for so long we had been hiding
from him, fearful like Adam peeking out from the underbrush, embarrassed by our
nakedness, the reality of our constant tendencies toward sin, yet all the while
stubbornly insisting that we would really be OK on our own. But God understood
too well. And in the fullness of time, with heart-breaking compassion and
extravagant tenderness, God lost himself in love and so descends quietly, as if
on tiptoe into the chaste womb of a simple Virgin; clothing himself with her
chaste flesh, our smelly flesh. God Most High has fallen hopelessly in love
with what he created.
The cry
of his people, so urgently expressed in this morning’s Psalm, “Rouse your
power, come to save us…let us see your face.” These words are but a faint echo the
ardent desire of his own Heart. He wants desperately to see us face to face. But
God’s desire to reveal his blessed face to us could only happen with Mary. With
her nod, she becomes his dwelling place on earth, the new Ark of the Covenant.
We know
the first Ark contained a golden vessel of manna, Aaron's rod that
had miraculously budded before Pharoah and the Tablets of the Commandments. All of
these were sacred, very tangible reminders of God’s deliverance, his unerring faithfulness
to his people; indeed, we could say, they were sacraments of his divine presence.
And so, the Israelites carry the Ark with them wherever they go. The Ark is
revered, the focus of prayer and worship, and will finally be enthroned at the
heart of the elaborate Jerusalem Temple.
But God
wanted so much more, his desire unquenched even by such devotion. Madly in love
with his creation, being worshipped at such a remove was unbearable for him. Holocausts and sin offerings no longer hit the spot. God needed a
body so that he could touch us, heal and console us. So it is that
Mary’s body becomes his new Ark. She will be the place where his glory now abides.
And her pregnancy marks the “dramatic relocation” of God from Temple to humanity.
Heaven is wedded to earth. He who cannot be contained is now contained
in the narrow confines of Mary’s delicate young body. The whole of
biblical revelation is this story of God’s longing to restore lasting intimacy
with the human race. See Robert Barron. Jesus has come to woo us back to God.
And so, Mary
the new Ark of the Covenant impelled by the Love within her, rises and goes into the hills. And
even in utero Jesus has begun the journey that will lead him all the way to his
cruel destiny on another hill in Jerusalem. He is always on the way. Mary is with him. And this morning she has come to
share the news of an unprecedented pregnancy with the one person who will
really get it - a pregnant Virgin visiting her older, once-barren cousin, who
is now amazingly in her sixth month. Both of them know from their very insides, their guts, that nothing is impossible for God. They can feel it. Mary bears God’s son,
Elizabeth his forerunner.
As the new Ark enters the house of the priest Zechariah, Elizabeth feels the child
within her bouncing with joy, and she exclaims (literally “intones”): “O how
blessed you are, how blessed the Lord whom you bear, blessed are you who
believed.” Family visit becomes Liturgy. And the infant John leaps and dances for
joy just as David before the Ark at its arrival in the holy city. God has interrupted
and transformed two lives.
But my
sisters and brothers, even all of that is not enough for our God. He wants more. As Mary
carried him, he begs to be carried by us, now and always. He calls out to us,
“Open to me. Are you there? Is anyone home? Come down, I must stay at your
house today.” But how surrender to his kindness, let him in, allow him to
inhabit our hearts and make an ark there, a sacred place?
I am
told by a friend, a college counselor that often now some of the
brightest students flounder and fail. Why? They work and work on papers,
anguishing over every detail, and can never press the “Send” button, they
freeze, so fearful that what they’ve written will not be good enough.
What about us? Are we enough? God seems to think so. And somehow, we have to be foolhardy enough to make ourselves available to him, and so available
for the wonder and disorientation that are in store. If we dare to let him in,
he is sure to be an unruly Guest, leading us in ways of love and compassion,
justice, and self-forgetfulness we never imagined we’d be capable of or asked to
accomplish. But it's worth it. He desperately wants to visit and stay, abide in the ark of our
flimsy, smelly flesh. We need do nothing more than fall backwards into the arms
of his mercy, trust him, believe the promise, simply say yes, and press “Send.”
Today's homily by one of the monks.
