“The first reading today, the prophet Micah prophecies about the coming messiah, he says, ‘When she who is to give birth has born.’ He’s speaking of Mary there, he’s prophesying about Mary. St. Luke, who seems to have a lot of inside information about Mary, and many think that he knew her personally or interviewed her or had some relationship with her, he draws parallels between God’s spiritual presence in ancient Israel, in the Old Testament and his real and physical presence to believers in the New Testament. Now, if you don’t have knowledge of the Old Testament, you will miss the connection when reading the New Testament. And that’s the problem today, we have many people who call themselves Christians who have little understanding of the Old Testament. St. Jerome said, ‘Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.’ And when he said that he was writing a commentary not about a book of the New Testament, but about the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, about the Old Testament. So he said, ‘If you really want to understand Christ, you have to know the Hebrew scriptures. You have to know the Old Testament.’ The early church fathers, the catechism even says there’s the saying the New Testament lies hidden in the old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the new. The early church fathers, a parallel between the Ark of the Covenant and the Virgin Mary. Now, if you remember what the Ark of the Covenant was, it was this Old Testament vessel, Acacia Wood Box covered with gold with special things inside of it. It was thought to have great power. For the Jews that was where spiritually God’s presence dwelled on the Earth. Mary is often seen by the church fathers as the ark of the New Testament, where the physical presence of God dwelt and would be delivered to the world.
St. Luke saw this connection, too. And you can sense it in his writing today in the Gospel. In the Old Testament and second Samuel Chapter six, the Ark, which had been stolen in battle by the Philistines, is returned to Israel and the Ark was taken where? To the hill country of Judea. Today in St. Luke’s Gospel where does Mary go? She makes haste after the Annunciation to the hill country of Judea to the same place to visit Elizabeth. In the Old Testament, when King David encounters the ark and its power. He asks, ‘How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?’ In St. Luke’s Gospel today, when Elizabeth encounters Mary, she says, ‘How does this happen to me that the mother of my lord should come to me?’ Very similar words. To the Jewish ear they would have heard a connection there. When King David encountered the Ark in the Old Covenant and the Old Testament, he came dancing before the Lord with abandon. When Elizabeth encounters Mary, the Ark of the new Covenant, the infantin Elizabeth’s womb leaped for joy. Both accounts depict celebratory dancing King David in the presence of the Ark and John the Baptist, the infant John the Baptist in the presence of Mary. In the Old Testament, the Ark returns to its home and ends up in Jerusalem. It stayed there about three months in its home. In the New Testament, Mary returns to her home after spending three months and eventually ends up in Jerusalem where she presents the God incarnate in the temple. It seems clear that Luke saw a connection between the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament and the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in salvation history. In the Ark of the Old Covenant, God came to his people with a spiritual presence, but in Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, God comes to dwell with his people, not only spiritually but physically in the womb of a specially prepared Jewish girl. Mary becomes then our model for discipleship. That’s why she’s introduced on this Sunday, right before Christmas. She was the first one, the first human to know Jesus and the first of his disciples. Elizabeth proclaimed to Mary, ‘Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled?’ You and I should imitate Mary’s faith and thus share her blessing. If we were to read on and Luke’s Gospel beyond the passage we got today, we would hear Mary echo the great hymn of praise and thanksgiving to God what we come to know as the Magnificat. ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,’ she says. Another translation says, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’ That’s a key element of Mary’s role. For you see, when that angel came to her, she realized my life is no longer about me, but it’s about God’s plan for me. That would be good for each of us to know too because our lives are not about us. They’re about God’s plan for us.You know, Christmas time is an odd time for me. It should be the time when I’m full of joy, but I tell you, it’s one of the most anxious times of the year for me. Anybody else get that feeling? You know, we have these high hopes that you too, little guy here? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks. I’m glad I’m not alone, but it should be a time of an outpouring of love and of peace and of hope and of joy, but there’s so many things, so many shoulds that we lay upon ourselves. You know, just getting the right gift and feeling the obligation to do this and that and get it all done right. And pretty soon, this goal of our peace all of a sudden devolves into anxiety and rush and pretty soon Christmas is tomorrow and I don’t, especially for us guys, we don’t have any shopping done yet, but as Christmas approaches, we should strive not to fall into that trap. We should ask God for the grace to imitate Mary’s faith. How can what was said about Mary be said about you and me? Blessed, are you who believe that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled. In your baptism you were claimed by God as a beloved child. He gave you grace, a saving grace, you were justified before Him, you became a member of His body, an adopted son or daughter. How can what was spoken of you be fulfilled? How can you and I, how can we in our souls, how can we magnify the Lord over these upcoming Christmas days as people encounter us, as we interact with family and friends, as we celebrate Christmas together? How can we magnify the Lord? How can we proclaim His goodness as we encounter people we love? To do so would be a wonderful goal this year, a wonderful goal to set, a wonderful goal for interacting with our family and friends that we would have the faith that Mary had, that our lives would somehow magnify the Lord, that our lives would proclaim his goodness, that we, in fact, would live this joy and peace of Christmas. Despite the anxiety, that’s still my prayer, that’s still my prayer. I invite you to make it yours as well.”