Letting Our Soul and Spirit Burst in Praise and Thanksgiving, December 22, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Mass for December 22
December 22, 2022
1 Sam 1:24-28, 1 Sam 2:1.4-8, Lk 1:46-56

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• For me, one of the most evocative phrases of the second phase of Advent is a line we pray in the Advent Preface the Church prays at all of the Masses between December 17 and 24: “The Virgin Mother longed for him with love beyond all telling.” Advent is a season of longing, of desire, and no one shows us that desire better than Mary, not only as Daughter Zion summing up in herself the longings of the Jewish people across the centuries awaiting the coming of the Messiah, but also as the Mother chosen by God the Father to conceive and bear that Messiah, that Son of the Living God. So many first-time moms are bursting with excitement for the birth of their child. Mary’s longing was, the Preface reminds us, beyond all description. She wants to help us enter into that holy longing.
• Today’s Gospel shows us how our Advent longing is both a now and not yet. She was pregnant not just with the long-awaited Messiah but the Son of the eternal Father. She already was carrying the fulfillment, but she was still longing to give birth to him, to hold him, to share him with others. But she was bursting already with praise and thanksgiving to God for the fulfillment of all he had promised. What she said only a few days into her pregnancy was what she would say, even more intensely and joyously, the rest of her days into eternity, because what she longed for with love beyond all telling had come even more wondrously than she and her fellow Jews would have ever dreamed.
• Mary shows us how to exult now at the presence of the Savior and to get ready even more to exult at his second coming, when, by his grace, we will be ready to leave the womb of the earth into the eternal presence of God-with-us. Mary shows us how to praise God in her Magnificat in today’s Gospel. She begins,“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Our souls are meant to magnify God and God, in fulfilling our desires, has given us so many reasons for soul-bursting praise. The Almighty has done great things for us and holy is his name! At the same time, we see that in order to praise and thank God aright, we need to experience longing for him and for the gifts that come from his generous hand. Mary describes how God looks on us in our lowliness, how he defends the innocent, the weak and the small with the strength of his arm, how he lifts us up the lowly, how he fills the hungry with good things, how he routinely and mercifully comes to the rescue of Israel. Each of these situations — poverty, hunger, weakness, even desperation — increases our recognition of our need to be saved and stokes our longing. And then when God comes in response to the prayers made out of that longing, how can our souls remain quiet? In her Magnificat, as Biblical scholars always point out, Mary synthesized various testimonies from famous women in the Old Testament, like the hymn of praise — which we have today in place of the Psalm — uttered by Hannah after God removed the shame of her sterility and allowed her to conceive and give birth to the one who would become the great prophet Samuel. The Blessed Mother incorporates as well Judith’s celebratory hymn after God saves Israel by working a miracle through her (Judith 16) . She also interweaves so many of the Psalms and aphorism of the wisdom literature.
• One line in Hannah’s praise that is part of the background texture of the Magnificat is particularly fitting to focus on. Hannah said that God “raises the needy from the dust, from the dung heap he lifts up the poor, to seat them with nobles and make a glorious throne their heritage.” The Lord who formed us from the dust lifts us up from the dust, elevates us from the dung and makes us noble and our throne glorious. That’s what God does for us when Jesus comes. That describes the “turnarounds” Mary praises in the Magnificat. The Mass for Christmas Day has a beautiful prayer that priests in the Latin Rite pray every day either in full (Extraordinary Form) or in an abbreviated (Ordinary Form) way when they pour the drop of water (symbolizing our humanity) into the chalice filled with wine (symbolizing Christ’s divinity). “Deus, qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti, et mirabilius reformasti, da, quaesumus, nobis eius divinitatis esse consortes, qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps.” The Opening Prayer for the Mass on Christmas morning translates it: “O God, who wonderfully created the dignity of human nature and still more wonderfully restored it, grant we pray, that we may share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” God created us wonderfully from the dust at the beginning but the way he has “reformed” us is even more remarkable, taking on our humanity so that we may become sharers in his divinity. He blew into us at the beginning of time the spirit that brought us to life; now he breathes on us the power of the Holy Spirit (Jn 20:22), so that we may experience his own divine life inside of us. When we grasp our fallenness, that we are dust and return to dust, but that God has come not only to breathe within us our soul but give us the Holy Spirit to make us sharers in God’s immortal nature and holiness, then we cannot help but sing a Magnificat! We have a longing beyond telling for the grace to overcome our fallen nature and when the long-desired One comes to fulfill that desire, we and all generations in heaven will never be able to cease describing how blessed we are!
• The best way to stoke that longing is by responding to God’s grace to long for him here at Mass. Even though we were once just dust, God has exalted us, and there’s no greater sign of that exaltation than here at Mass, when the King of the Nations sets up his throne within us so that we can build our whole life on him the Cornerstone. It’s through entering into communion with him that he seeks to make us one. Let us beg him to increase our longing so that as we prepare to receive him who took on our humanity, we may more and more share in his divinity and so that our whole lives may become a Magnificat that one day we hope to sing in unison with Mary and all the saints.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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