Readings from USCCB
Of all the contrasts between Zechariah and Mary in St. Luke’s infancy narratives, the starkest is found in their responses to the good news announced to each. What makes Mary’s response to St. Gabriel even more striking is that objectively, the message entrusted to her was much more difficult to understand from an “earthly perspective”. After all, what Gabriel announced to Zechariah was news which he and his wife had been longing to hear for many years. While the facts foretold by Gabriel were unlikely from a human standpoint, they were not impossible even by human standards, and had precedent in biblical history.
Mary is unique. Her response to the Good News is possible only through faith. Zechariah did not even have faith in a human possibility. Yet Mary has faith in a seeming human impossibility. She trusts that God will accomplish what He wills, and speaks only of what He wills. How different are you and I: we speak not only of what we will, but also of what we desire and dream about, what piques our interest even momentarily, and even what would harm us. Worse yet is what we so often do, which in facts harms us spiritually, bodily, emotionally and in other ways: in fact, “personally”, in its fullest sense.
Mary is a person as God created human persons to be. Jesus is a divine person (with a human nature), but Mary is like you and me in that she’s a human person. But she lives up to, and shows us what it truly means, to live as a person, which means fully to relate to others, and to the Other who created and redeemed us in His Son. Mary accepts God as her Creator and Savior, and lives for Him rather than for herself.
from catholicdioceseofwichita.org
Today’s Readings from USCCB
Although the liturgies of Lent evoke the themes of darkness and blindness, these themes are fundamental to the Season of Advent. The Sacred Liturgy during Advent often uses these themes to help Christians appreciate what man is without God.
Both the First and Gospel Readings today speak to the experience of blindness. The reference in the First Reading is only in passing: it’s one of many metaphors that speak to the power that will be seen “on that day”, the day of which the Book of the Prophet Isaiah speaks at length. That day sees reversals of fortune and wonders of nature, all testifying to the majesty of the Lord’s coming.
In comparison, the Gospel Reading seems to have a simpler focus. After curing the blindness of the two men, Jesus “warned them sternly” not to tell others about the miracle, and then the cured men ignore Jesus and spread their good news. Jesus doesn’t tell them, and St. Matthew doesn’t tell us, the reason for Jesus’ warning. However, in the bigger picture of the Gospel, it seems that the good news of individuals isn’t the same as the Good News of Jesus.
Putting the two readings side by side, they point our attention in the direction of today’s Responsorial Psalm. It is not to cure physical blindness that God sent His Son into the world. Nor are wonders of Mother Nature anything but signs of the Lord’s Power. When the Psalmist declares that the Lord is his light and his salvation, he’s singing of God’s desire and ability to raise us out of our sins and out of our very world, into His own sight for eternity. To the imagery of light the Psalmist adds his admission that the “one thing” he seeks is to “gaze on the loveliness of the LORD”. Here in Psalm 27 we hear the focus of Advent come into sharp relief.
from catholicdioceseofwichita.org
THE CONCHO PADRE POST 