Well here we are, the fourth week of the journey that is Advent. Advent we know means ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’; we traditionally look forward in advent to the ‘coming’ of Christ, the birth of Jesus, and on the day we celebrate the ‘arrival’ of our infant king.
At this time of year and more than ever there is a lot of coming and going – mainly to do with shopping for presents, for food, for cards…more shopping, more food…But these are all part of our celebration, our remembering family and friends through visiting locally or sometimes travelling long journeys to be with loved ones on a rare and special occasion, sharing time with one another and the mutual handing over of gifts.
Although we are close to Christmas now it seems as if the anticipation and the planning starts ever earlier each year in the material sense. For children especially their anticipation is earlier too, ‘what shall I ask for, what will I get?’ If we think of advent as a journey to Christmas, can we imagine children on a car journey who always ask ‘are we there yet?’ Every time we see our grandson he usually has counted out the decreasing number of days…
In our Gospel Mary sets out ‘with haste’ on a long journey too to visit her cousin Elizabeth; can we imagine this journey, which was almost 100 miles in those days, and Mary’s anticipation of meeting Elizabeth so far away having been told by the archangel Gabriel that she was to bear a child? No wonder she was to stay there for three months and Elizabeth was already six months pregnant.
Mary is about to present us with the baby Jesus – a unique gift, born out of love of God to the world and out of the love of Mary who gave a willing ‘yes’ to the Angel Gabriel, ‘behold I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.’ Today we light the fourth advent candle, the candle of love: this symbolises that love of God and of Mary. We no longer anticipate Christmas, rather we know that Christmas is coming, not only because we have reached the fourth week, not only because we hear the prophesy of Micah in our first reading, ‘But from you O Bethlehem one who is to be ruler of Israel…and whose coming forth is from old…’ but also because Mary goes in search of Elizabeth; and we know the next great event in the history of this family is they will both give birth, Elizabeth to John the Baptist and Mary to Jesus.
It is almost Christmas and a child is about to be born to us. Jesus will be that unique and precious gift of a loving Father about to be offered on the first Christmas Day. We are about to embrace the best possible gift we could receive. As we do with our Christmas presents so too do we reach out with open and grateful hands the greatest gift. This gift is coming into our world, into our families, into our hearts, into our lives and from a humble beginning.
Micah too came from a humble background mirrored by that of Mary and Joseph. God chooses the humble. This is our sign of God’s love for us and how much he values us. We in our humility accept him by showing our thankfulness for our lives and the gifts we receive.
I remember in my childhood how times were very different. One Christmas I received a globe. On another I had had a Timex watch which stopped working; when I opened the present it was my Timex watch restored to working order.
Perhaps that is a good theme for us to today as we celebrate our fourth Sunday and light the candle of love and the last few days before our biggest celebration of the season; the end of the anticipation for Christmas as we continue our journey to the reality that love is born and we are restored to human and spiritual working order and renewed in our certainty that leads to salvation. To coin the words of an Elton John song, ‘How wonderful life is with God in the world.’