GOSPEL REFLECTIONS, WEDNEDSAY 3RD WEEK IN ADVENT, 18 DECEMBER 2024

Matthew 1:18-24.  It is almost impossible for us to come to this gospel with fresh eyes and ears.  It is embedded in us deeply as Christians, filled with the richest meanings of the Incarnation, the role of Mary, of God amongst us as Emmanuel, and so on.  Today it strikes me that in this short (!!) gospel reflection, we cannot reflect on all of it.  But it does strike me here of the action of the Holy Spirit.  At her Annunciation, Mary was told by the heavenly messenger Gabriel, that she was to bear a child, and that the child, to be called Jesus, was conceived in her by the Holy Spirit.  This was the same Holy Spirit that hovered over the chaotic waters at the creation of all that is, the same Holy Spirit at the heart of the Church.  The presence of the Holy Spirit in Mary, conceiving Jesus the Son of God, at the behest of God the Father tells us that we must be much more aware when we refer to God that we refer to the Holy Trinity.  In practice, we tend to think of God as the Father, Or the Son, OR the Holy Spirit, setting our sense of the Holy Trinity in the background.  Mary’s encounter with God, surprising or even a bit frightening (after all she was told by Gabriel not to be afraid) is the fundamental reality of our life as Christians.  God in Three Persons became Incarnate – one of us, in order that we be sanctified and saved!! 

We may well experience our encounter with God as the Church and as individuals as a bit like Mary’s: like her, with great faith, we receive the implanted Word of God within our hearts, our deepest beings, and there we find the Father and Jesus too by the action of the Holy Spirit.  That is why we celebrate Christmas with such joy and thankfulness!