4th Sunday of Advent - 21 Dec 2014

Link to Today's Readings
2 Samuel 7: 1-5, 8-11, 16 + Psalm 89 + Romans 16: 25-27 + Luke 1: 26-38

Click here to listen to this week's homily 
Recorded at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma

We sometimes make promises we cannot keep, for whatever reason.
But what God promises, God does. What God says God will do, God does. 

God keeps making promises and keeps on keeping His promises. What seems impossible from the human vantage point, becomes possible in and through God who works in and through the human situation.  

So when God promises to build an everlasting household for David, David trusts this will be accomplished, even though David cannot comprehend how it will come about.  If God promises that the kingdom and throne of David will endure forever, this will come to pass. By God’s saving initiative, the Davidic covenant is born.

David trusts God will be true to God’s promises because there is evidence in David’s own life, where God made the seemingly impossible, very possible and real. Like when the prophet Samuel chose David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons and a common shepherd, to be King. David was not the most likely candidate in Samuel’s eyes, for the prophet thought God would select one of David’s very capable older brothers. Or when David defeated Goliath, relying solely on the Lord His Rock to propel him to victory. David relied not on heavy, protective armor to shield him from the blows of the giant, nor on a sharpened spear or sword---only his faithful slingshot.  for a mere youth, not dressed properly for battle nor with the proper weapons could defeat the Giant Goliath. But they and all Israel discover through David that with God all things are possible.

What also sustains David’s hope that God will be faithful to God’s promises is how God has done marvelous, seemingly impossible things with people of faith before him.

As David examines the history of his ancestors, and ponders the other covenants God made, he sees how over and over again God made the impossible possible.

Take Abraham and Sarah. They are called forth by God from the comfort of their own home to go to a land God promises to give them, and to be the father and the mother of a great nation, even though they are childless. Even though they are without a son, God promises that their descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand of the seashore. From this aged couple, who to all the world appeared as good as dead, God raises up a son, Isaac. For all things are possible for God when human beings are open to and cooperate with God’s saving action. Thus, the covenant with Abraham is established, which will never be destroyed.

Then there is the Mosaic covenant, or the Covenant at Mt. Sinai, where God,

through Moses, forms the wandering Hebrew slaves from Egypt into his chosen people and blesses them with His saving Law, at whose heart are the 10 Commandments. David knows by heart the incredible ways God acted to set the stage for such a great covenant of love. God chooses Moses to set his people free from slavery in Egypt and lead them through the desert on the way to the Promised Land. But Moses is a wanted criminal in Egypt, plus he struggles to speak well--- surely God would have been better off choosing someone else for such an impossible task. But when Moses says “yes” to God’s call, God is able to use him in ways he never dreamed possible. The Hebrew people are set free from slavery in Egypt, not by a powerful army, but by the hand of God, who sends plague after plague until Pharoah lets them go free. When they are trapped on the shore of the Red Sea, God makes possible a way forward where there is no way forward, opening up the sea for the people to pass through. When the people grumble and complain against Moses and God for bringing them into the desert to die, because there is not enough food and water, God sends them water from a rock and manna as bread from heaven.

David sees the impossible made real in the lives of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and the chosen people of Israel, and others who surrendered their lives into God’s hands--Joseph and Judith, Gideon and Joshua, Ruth and Esther—and what seemed impossible for them God made happen, because God is faithful to God’s promises. The Blessed Virgin Mary, who marries into the house of David through Joseph, knows the history of her people and how the God of Israel is a God for whom all things are possible. Thus, she can say, “YES” to God’s plan for her to bring his only Son into the world.

Mary has been carrying on a conversation with the living God long before Gabriel visits. She is in a living, dynamic relationship with the God who did the impossible by bringing new life to Abraham and Sarah. She knows in an intimate manner the God who did one improbable deed after another to save her people from slavery and lead them through the desert to the Promised Land. Mary knows, simply by reflecting on the past deeds of God, that God can do great things in and through her. She understands, however, that God makes the impossible a reality through the consent of a human being who is open to God’s voice and cooperates with God’s plan.

What makes Mary’s “YES” possible are the “yes’s” of all the faithful people

who have gone before her. Her courageous consent is built upon the courageous consent of others.

Abe and Sarah’s “YES” which causes them to journey into the unknown enables Mary to say, “YES,” and make the same journey into the unknown, so that in and through her all generations will be blessed. Moses “YES” to God’s plan to set His people free encourages Mary to submit to God’s wild and wondrous plan to use her to bring into the world the Savior, who will set all people free from sin and death. David’s “YES” to being selected the next king, he the most unlikely person of all, empowers this humble maiden to say YES and allow the King of Kings to be born in her.

God, who throughout His long history with the people of Israel, has transformed impossible situations into something possible and very real, now does the seemingly most impossible thing of all---becomes human, like us. But God can only do so through the cooperation of Mary---her YES.

Mary’s “Yes” makes possible our Yes to God’s desire to take our flesh and be born into our world. Christ has only one mother in the flesh, but we are all called to bring forth Christ by faith.

Her YES and the YES’s of all those faithful ones before us gives us the courage

to step out on a limb and say YES to what God is asking of us today, no matter how impossible it may seem.

But even if we are not able to take the leap that faith requires by saying, “YES”,

even if we initially say “NO”, the God of all hope-fullness perseveres, by sending another angel, and then another. By reminding us daily that our lives, and this earth on which we live,  are miracles made possible by His Creative love.

So we can trust that with God all things are possible, even God’s desire to come to life in and through us by the power of God’s Spirit.

Fr. Joseph A. Jacobi