Christ Our Savior is Conceived

Gospel Reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Advent - Luke 1:26-38

And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth,

To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be.

And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God.

Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus.

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever.

And of his kingdom there shall be no end.

And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man?

And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren:

Because no word shall be impossible with God.

And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:26-38 DRA)

The readings for this fourth Sunday of Advent, only one day before Christmas, focus on two themes which are absolutely essential for a proper understanding of the true meaning of Christmas: the Davidic kingship of Christ and the preeminence of the Annunciation.

The first theme is central both to Scripture and to the Church. King David is one of the many “types” or prefigurements of Christ in the Old Testament, alongside Adam, Abraham, Moses and many others. Christ fulfills the hopes of all the saints of Israel by accomplishing that which they all desired and sought in their obedience to the Law: the perfect union of God and man and the destruction of sin and death. David, the greatest king of Israel and the composer of the Psalms, was, like Our Lord, a priest in the order of Melchizedek, a true priest-king, fusing the royal and priestly offices into one. As the hymnographer of the Psalms, David was also a prophet, not only through his prophecies which point so incredibly to Christ’s life and mission but also through the depth of divine wisdom imparted by God through him. Throughout the centuries, for Israel and the Church, the Psalms have been the hymnal and the prayerbook for all the faithful and especially in the Divine Liturgy.

Christ, as the Son of David, not only fulfilled the promises given by God through Nathan by His work of salvation and the establishment of the New Covenant – He specifically fulfilled them by establishing the Church as His new Kingdom. For many today, the Church is only the invisible bond between all Christian believers; the hierarchy, if it is considered necessary at all, is purely functional, not essential. But this is not how Christ designed His Church to be. Instead, the Church is intended to be a kingdom. Christ, who received His paradoxical crown and royal robe from His very executioners and ascended His throne on a cross, has, like the Master in His parables, left His people for a time, although He remains with us always in the Real Presence of the Eucharist. His ministers, the bishops and priests of the Church, under the authority of His steward the pope, distribute His gifts of sacramental grace to His priestly nation of all the baptized. He thus gave St. Peter the keys to His kingdom to act as His representative on Earth, an authority shared by the bishops, and established a new Law for His kingdom in His teachings. This kingdom is like none other on Earth: the rulers are the servants; expansion of the empire is done through charity and preaching; and our King freely gave up His own life to defend us from the Enemy. Even the great Catholic kingdoms of Christendom, many of which earnestly sought to imitate this divine kingdom, were only ever a shadow of it.

The second theme, the Annunciation, is intimately tied up with the first. The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, becomes a house for God, not made by human hands but consecrated by the Holy Spirit Himself. Even St. Joseph, Christ’s adoptive father who, despite sharing no blood with Our Lord, gave to Him through adoption the fullness of his inheritance as the heir of David, exemplifies this thematic convergence. Christ is not only Emmanuel, God with us, our Savior from sin and death – He is specifically the King of the throne of David, conquering Satan through humility and charity and fulfilling, through the countless subjects of His kingdom in the Church, all the covenants of the Old Testament, including that given to David in our first reading.

The Annunciation, however, also has another important connection with Christmas that should not be overlooked. Many people today, including devout and knowledgeable Christians, see Christmas as the day when Christ entered the world, when His Incarnation began. But this is not the case. Christmas was only the culmination and eucatastrophe of His nine months in the tabernacle of the Blessed Virgin, when she introduced Him to the world as its Savior. The Incarnation of Christ actually occurred at the Annunciation, when the Holy Spirit, in remembrance of His creation of life in the waters of Genesis, overshadowed Mary and created a radically new life, one utterly free from sin and inextricably united with God, a preview and foretaste of God’s providential plan for all humans. The first participant in this union is Mary herself, from whose body the Body of Christ was taken and whose very blood became the Blood of Christ in her womb.

This is an especially important point for Christians to remember and preach to the world today. The Annunciation is the ultimate pro-life event. It is the true Advent of Christ’s mission on Earth, just as the life of every human person begins at conception. Christ was not a “blob of tissue” or merely a part of Mary’s body prior to Christmas. As St. John the Baptist recognized when he leapt in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, Jesus was fully God and fully man from His conception at the Annunciation, when He was only a single-celled zygote with His own unique DNA and human soul created immediately by God. To say that an unborn child is not human, or that a mother is free to murder her child if she feels like it, is to say that Mary would have been free to murder Jesus in her womb, that He was not truly a person until Christmas. This is a diabolical lie and a blasphemy. By becoming an unborn child, God united Himself with all the unborn, identifying Himself with them in His humanity and ensuring the sanctity of all their lives. To harm them, or to encourage others to do so, is thus a sin against God Himself, one whose blood cries out for vengeance like that of Abel.

At His first coming, Christ appeared as an unborn child, then as a helpless newborn at Christmas, entirely dependent upon His own creatures, defenseless before the evils of the world. Throughout His earthly mission, He sought only to teach and to forgive, not to judge. But when He returns, having come into His kingdom, He will reign as king and judge over all:  

And when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. (Mt 25:31-33)

This is the final eschatological theme of Advent, leading into the joy of Christmas. We are reminded not to take advantage of Our Lord’s mercy and patience, testing Him by putting off repenting for our sins and disobeying His laws in the assumption that we still have time to make amends. We do not know the day or the hour when our life will be required of us: therefore, like the Wise Men, Christmas is for us a summons to perform works of charity and penance, to seek the truth in earnest and to be reconciled with God our King for our transgressions. Only then can our exile be pardoned and we be allowed reentry into His realm, the eternal Promised Land. For those today, particularly the leaders of the Church, Christ’s stewards and ministers on Earth, who ignore His laws, encouraging sin and conflating good with evil, remember that the Babe will return as the Judge and all our hidden disobedience will be made manifest and will receive the punishment due for it. Until that time, may we remain faithful to our King above all others, even when this means resisting those whom He has charged with leading us, whether in the Church or the world, whenever they teach or act contrary to His will.

I wish all the wonderful writers and readers of Missio Dei a joyous Christmas season and I ask for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and all the angels and saints on this holy day of Our Lord’s Nativity!

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