Saturday 3rd Week of Advent A 2025

Today our Gospel presents the Annunciation. We are closer than ever to the birth of Christ, so we hear how it came about 9 months earlier.

 

And not the usual manner at all of course but through the Holy Spirit Mary conceived a son. Not just any son but The Son. The Son of God and Son of Man. The one prophesied in scripture 300 years earlier has arrived as promised.

 

And the world had been completely changed by it. The news of God becoming man has been proclaimed around the world and his influence on man can be seen through the centuries of time.

 

It is such a familiar event and time and season we forget to remember the magnitude and meaning presented in this birth to a young girl in a backwater town.

God has taken what the world said was impossible and became one of us out of love and a desire for us to have a path home to him.

 

And he wasn’t born to royalty or comfortable circumstances. The world rose against him. From the moment he was born leaders sought to destroy him. Such was the desperation of the evil one to stop this birth and life.

 

He was not even born in a home but among the animals. No special treatment. No fine cottons but hay. No central ac but outdoors while the animals waited and watched.

 

God was born into man as the babe. Weak and vulnerable and his family had to move again and again to seek refuge. Jesus and Mary and Joseph would be refugees. Immigrants. Poor, without home or wealth. Those who traveled to escape violence.

 

This was the beginnings of Jesus Christ, divine God and fully human.

 

All because of a simple yes.

 

God sent his angel to ask.

Mary even while understanding that it was impossible for the world she knew, she said yes. Even the biology of it all. Impossible. Yet she trusted God’s will for her life, even as she faced scandal.

 

It was in contrast to 300 years earlier when Ahaz was told that the virgin would be with child as a sign and he said no. Mary said yes and her yes was for the entire world.

 

Yes, let God become man.

Yes, let his love be planted in human flesh.

Yes, for you and me.

 

We may not see how we can do his will in our life sometimes. We will have choices to make where doing the will of God and doing what is safe and easier in this world will collide.

 

Mary tells us to say yes to God always and find the path God has for you. For we all have a role in God’s plan only we can fill. We are not inconsequential but vital. God is relying on us to say yes, or there will be darkness where there should be light.

 

Say yes to God in every circumstance and he will lead you to a life here and later that is beyond our imagination, and we will live in real joy and real peace.