On Tuesday Pope Francis will open the Jubilee year,
and on Saturday Bishop Ralph will launch the Jubilee locally.
Pope Francis invites us, during this year, to be ‘pilgrims of hope’.
Christian hope, founded in God’s promises, looks beyond this life.
It is hope in God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness, salvation, and justice.
Hope is also very much the focus of Advent.
For that reason, I associate the purple of Advent,
and at funerals, primarily with the celebration of hope,
Soon we will celebrate Jesus’ birth, his nativity.
God comes among us, comes to us, as a human being:
not just with the appearances of a human being,
but as a real human being, with the limitations that entails.
But, as we wait to celebrate the nativity,
we are reminded in today’s gospel
that the fundamental mystery, the Incarnation,
doesn’t start at Jesus’ birth,
but in Mary’s womb.
God’s creative Word, the second person of the Trinity,
became flesh in, and of, Mary:
and God-is-with-us.
In Mary’s womb,
the Word of God is silent and wholly dependent on Mary.
This is a ‘self-emptying’ that communicates,
that ‘speaks’, through silence and weakness,
of God’s unconditional love for us.
Being touched by this unconditional love,
encountering, knowing, trusting Jesus as God’s Word made flesh,
as God-with-us, is life-changing.
We receive hope:
hope that sees beyond sufferings, setbacks and failings;
hope that knows purpose, meaning and ultimate fulfilment
– gifts God gives to us through Jesus.
As part of the Advent theme of hope, we reflect on, and enter into,
the hope of Israel,
expressed so often by the prophets;
the hope that God has plan to save Israel
despite the people’s failings and their objectively dire circumstances.
That hope, running through the Old Testament,
concentrates, settles, is personified, in Mary,
who, in Elizabeth’s words, heard today,
believed that there would be a fulfilment
of what was spoken to her from the Lord.
…and what was ‘spoken’ to Mary…
superficially, Gabriel’s words of annunciation,
but, profoundly, ultimately, what was ‘spoken’ to her then
was The Word of God, made flesh in her womb,
and Mary’s believing that there will be a fulfilment of what was spoken
is hope.
The Icon at the back has a Greek inscription:
He Panton-elpis, which means
The Hope of All, The Hope of Everything.
Mary is both the exemplar of Christian hope, and,
though her acceptance of the Word, the bearer of our hope.
May we, like Mary, believe in a fulfilment of what was spoken.
Let us heed Pope Francis call to be pilgrims of hope this year:
to be a people who gratefully rejoice in the hope Jesus brings,
and a people who bring, and who are, hope to others.