It strikes me that today’s feast is not about Mary, it is about God! We are not celebrating Mary doing anything, we are celebrating the remarkable truth that God has “blessed us with every blessing in the heavenly places” (from the Second Reading). Today is about what God wants and what God does to make it happen. God wants us to know our worth and dignity, to know that we are treasured and loved.

So, during this season of Advent when we contemplate Mary who carries the child in her womb with love beyond all telling, we are not being called to put her on a pedestal; we are being asked to contemplate her willingness to participate wholeheartedly in the mystery of God at work in the world through ordinary human beings simply being faithful.

We are now in Liturgical Year C and the Gospel of Luke puts Mary before us as the woman of faith whose openness to the Spirit characterizes her whole life. At the beginning she welcomes the Spirit and then ponders the child and the events surrounding his birth; at the end she is with the Church praying for the gift of that same Spirit to be poured out.

As Jesus tells us, her blessedness lies in the fact that she hears the word of God and acts on it (Luke 12:27).  It is precisely because of this humble faithfulness that God has come into the world and this is how we too are asked to live.

Meister Eckhart summed it up in this way: “We are all called to be the mother of God because God is always needing to be born.”

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