Message of Abbot Paul - Monday 20th December

Message from Fr Paul for Monday, 20th December 2021

           We enter now on the home straight to Christmas, but as Christians we don’t celebrate the feast before it comes. We continue to keep vigil as we wait patiently for the great day to arrive. Advent continues to hold our attention as we get closer to the Nativity of Our Lord. Looking at the great O Antiphons, today we keep O Clavis David, remembering that the Christ who comes will be the new David, the true King of Israel and of the whole Universe, for through him were all things made, to quote the Prologue to John’s Gospel, read on Christmas Morning. Here is a translation: “O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel; that opens and no man can shut; and shuts, and no man can open. Come, and bring the prisoners out of the prison house, and those who sit in the darkness and the shadow of death.”

Jesus is the key that unlocks the mystery of life and death, the mystery of God’s plan to redeem and renew all that he created in the beginning. He frees those who are imprisoned in their sins and forgives all those who turn to him for forgiveness and reconciliation with God and with their neighbour.

           Our Gospel today is Luke’s account of the Annunciation, so well-known and loved by everyone that we can recite it with our eyes shut. Here it is, (Lk 1: 26-38).

“The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’ She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you’ the angel answered ‘and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible to God.’ ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord,’ said Mary ‘let what you have said be done to me.’ And the angel left her.”

           Just a thought on this passage. The wonderful exchange between Mary and the angel Gabriel expresses God’s pure and simple gift to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God” (1:35). Within this single verse, we have from the very moment of Jesus’ conception the reason why the Christian faith is centred in the triune God. All three persons are present in the God we confess as “the Most High,” in Jesus Christ “the Son of God,” and the overshadowing presence of “the Holy Spirit.” Luke sees from this moment the presence of the Holy Trinity in the minute foetus the womb of Mary. It is God, the whole God, who takes human flesh and blood from Mary and becomes a human being, God made man, for our salvation. This is the moment when heaven and earth meet and become one. History and creation have been building up to this moment and preparing for it and all will flow from it. And it happens in the heart, mind and body of a young virgin in an insignificant village in Galilee. Although we celebrate Christmas as the great solemnity of Christ’s birth, it is his conception, of course, that truly matters. All else flows from it and is the fruit of God’s sowing on earth. We can see now how essential to the History of Salvation is Mary. Without her this could never have happened. Her words to the angel are the most important ever spoken by a human being. May they be a model and example for our own behaviour.                 “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me”’