Growing Up at Christmas

The texts today for the Fourth Sunday of Advent from the Roman Catholic Lectionary offer us some food to help grow us up as Christmas approaches. The Prophet Micah, according to Friar Jude Winkler, was a contemporary of Isaiah who saw Jerusalem as a sin city which needed restoration to values in which the people of God can live. He proclaimed for his own time a call to seek leadership for the people from the line of David and in a place with ``small town values``, Bethlehem. The passage from the letter to the Hebrews presents the restoration of the Promise to the people through Jesus action of being obedient to the will of the Father. Friar Jude comments that obedience, in our time, has a connotation of subordination which gives us difficulty. We need to grow into humility, obedience and trust so that the model of Mary operates with our being through the power of the Holy Spirit to allow the truth that the Will of God for people is Love, peace and fullness of Life. The Gospel of Luke tells of the movement of Mary to bring Presence to Elizabeth and begin a journey wherein the Shepherd Leader desired by Micah and the One obedient to the Will of the Father will be identified by John the Baptist who stands in his time as the Prophet who witnesses the fulfillment of the Promise within the mystery of the womb. Father Larry Gillick SJ captures the difficulty we have with taking it all in. Our cultural celebrations at this time also present a challenge to take it all in. We are overwhelmed and we try to overwhelm. We can sense impatience and we strain to be patient. The awe and wonder of the cultural celebration calls us to restore our awe and wonder at the invitation to grow up spiritually in the trust of Mary that we are blessed by those to whom we present the Presence of the Lord.