In today's Gospel, the Angel Gabriel greets Mary with the first ever Hail Mary in the history of the known universe. It is thus only fitting that the Annunciation, which is what today's Gospel is about, is the very first mystery on the entire Rosary. It is one of the Joyful mysteries, which we tend to pray regardless of which day it is during the Advent season. After all, Advent is the beginning of the Liturgical year and the Joyful mysteries represent the beginning of the Rosary.
Well, regardless of all that, her response was not anything like "Good boy, you're praying your Rosary." On the contrary she was rather perplexed. So the angel reassured her by telling her not to be afraid. Now what could Mary possibly be afraid of? Quite frankly, a lot of things.
As was the custom back then, she found herself betrothed as a teenager. It is likely that this arrangement was made by either her parents or his parents. Now try to imagine your state of mind as a teenager and then try to imagine being fixed up with your life partner at that age by your families. You may not be all that happy about that. Teenagers then may have had more adult responsibilities than teens now but their thought process and psychological development would have been exactly the same. Mary might have felt that her life was in a bit of turmoil.
Then while she's just walking along minding her own business, this vaguely human form appears in front of her and seems to be made of light and has wings and speaks in a deep, booming voice and tells her how great she is. And then he proceeds to tell her that she's preggers even though she had no reason to believe something like this. Worse still, there were very grave consequences awaiting someone who's pregnant and unmarried.
So Mary had a lot going on in her mind. Even with her relative Elizabeth to talk to, for support, this was still going to be a considerable burden for Mary to bear. It would have been tempting, and logical, to respond "why me? why can't someone else do this?" But instead, she humbly accepted God's will, God's plan for her, and trusted that things would work out.
We're at the part of Advent where people are trying to wrap things up, do some things last-minute, or just tie up loose ends. Christmas Day is only a week away so there are some things we will not be able to do unless we've already been doing them. This is where we accept what can realistically be expected. If things are meant to get done then they will be done. We just have to trust that it will all work out.
Every year we go through this and when Christmas Day rolls around, we either fulfill our self-imposed obligations or allow them to fall past due. Nothing bad really happens. All we have to do is accept what is or is not meant to be and then trust that things will work out. It's about accepting God's will, His plan for us, and trusting that He will make things work out. This applies for the Advent season but also for our own personal lives in the long run. Let's follow Mary's example of acceptance and trust.
Luke 1: 26-38
No comments:
Post a Comment