Present and Vulnerable

The texts today in the Roman Catholic Lectionary offer an understanding of the nature of God through the actions and responses of some well known figures in salvation history. The Prophet Isaiah is addressing the king Ahaz and is trying to encourage him, according to Friar Jude Winkler, to abandon his plans to seek to welfare of Judah in alliances with foreign powers but to seek help from God who is ever present and faithful to the Covenant. As an on-going reminder of God's faithfulness, Isaiah prophesies that a child will be born in the court of Ahaz who will be named Immanuel, God is with us. The annunciation to Mary by the angel Gabriel that she is favoured by God to be the woman through whom the Divine would be incarnate leaves her with questions, not of defensiveness, as Winkler points out, but of confusion. Our human understanding is so inadequate before the Will of the One who the psalmist proclaims controls the earth and all that is in it that confusion is more often replaced with the rejection of Ahaz instead of the "Yes" of Mary. The name of Jesus, "Yahweh saves", alerts Mary to the nature of the mission to which she ascents. It is difficult to imagine the God proclaimed as universal Creator, by the psalmist being vulnerable to the  response of the young girl Mary who is the Yes to God of all times.