I hope your Advent preparation includes Visitation moments when you simply share and laugh and pray with those you deeply love.

Christmas is on the horizon, and today’s Scriptures may be lost amid the merriment as well as the Christmas pageants and the busyness of the season.

The prophet Micah in the first Scripture reading speaks of a coming ruler who will restore peace to the world.  Emerging from unlikely Bethlehem, this leader will walk in the ways of peace and bring true security to the people. Can the prophetic dream of Micah calm our spirits and mobilize us to move from fearful reaction to hopeful action in facing the moral and political dilemmas of our time?   We have been dominated by fear and the terrorists’ threats in San Bernardino, California and in Paris and the Los Angeles school system.  As we watch the presidential debates in the significant questions about our security as nation, we wonder whether guns and our military might can save us, whether banning Syrian immigrants can save us, or closing the door to Muslim immigrants can save us?  Without waging into political debates, this I deeply believe:  only a heart open to God and our brothers and sisters can bring healing to us and our world.  May we pray for the coming of the Prince of Peace into our hearts and into our world.

In some ways, we have been in darkness of fear too long.  Fear has ruled us and we are in need of light to find our way.  Let the light of your countenance shine upon us, God, so that we might find peace and hope in the future.

In the second Scripture reading from the book of Hebrews, the coming of Christ changes everything.  The sacred writer proclaims that we need God’s presence in our midst.  Plain and simple, we are saved by grace, not by human achievement.

The Gospel is our family story – the story of our salvation.  It is a tale of the early days of our own religious clan.  We can claim Elizabeth and Mary as our ancestors in our faith history.  As both were pregnant through the grace of God, they came together as friends, as cousins, as soul mates.   We see Elizabeth’s great act of faith in the words she spoke to Mary:  “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

Today’s readings invite us to treasure fond memories of these two women who are our ancestors in faith, these two whose faith freed them enough to believe in what reason told them could never happen.  These two knew they were only women.  Not only that, but Elizabeth was too old and Mary too inexperienced; there could be no rational expectation that God’s promises would be fulfilled through them.  But that impossibility, their utter incapacity, was precisely their advantage.  Because they knew they could not accomplish it by themselves, they did not limit God to their abilities or expectations.  They were empty enough to become full of grace.  

Today, as we prepare to celebrate the feast of the Nativity, we are invited to contemplate the example of Mary and Elizabeth.  They offer us a model of friendship rooted in shared faith, a faith so deep that it risks everything and can even rejoice in the adventure of an unknown future.

What about our family stories that are rooted in friendship and in shared faith?   May we treasure our family history and our family stories and increase our awareness of the spiritual dimension of these stories.  I very treasure my relationship with my two sisters, Anne and Jean, and my brother John.  In my family, as I willing to bet in your families, my siblings and nephews and nieces have different ways of living out their faith.  I don’t pretend to say we all are pray in the same way.  But I do know we love each other and treasure the times we are together.

Most recently, 55 of us were together on Thanksgiving Day at my brother John’s home.  We have celebrated marriages, baptisms, first communions, deaths of my parents and older brother and sister, and the priesthood ordination of my nephew Jason at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome by St. John Paul II.  There have been many, many treasured and special events in our family history.

But when I reflect on the Gospel visitation of Mary and Elizabeth in trust and gratitude, I don’t think of a most significant family event – a milestone event; rather I think of a very personal intimacy between two good friends who were sharing their love and faith with each other.  I know for myself it is such a gift when my sister and I share the Eucharist and then share a cup of coffee at Starbucks.  It is a very ordinary coming together of siblings – no big deal; but in another sense, what is more important in life than the gratitude and trust and love that my sister and I share with each other.  At the end of the day, this is what is lifegiving for me and for my sister as well.

I hope your Advent preparation includes Visitation moments when you simply share and laugh and pray with those you deeply love.  In that context, God is present and we will be led to pray as Mary did:  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

Mary and Elizabeth are helping us to enter the Christmas mystery of God’s unending love for us.  God chooses to come to us in the context of family, as a tiny child.  May you value your family life and discover how Jesus seeks to be born again in family life – in your family life.

The Scriptures tell us that in the dawn of our salvation, the Savior was born in the humble insignificant town of Bethlehem; his mother was a young humble woman from Nazareth.  She chose to visit her elderly cousin Elizabeth.  In their sharing and trust in each other, we come to pray a beautiful story of our spiritual family history.

May you reflect in this Advent-Christmas season on your personal family story  --- the spiritual dimension of your family history.  God chooses to come among in humble places and among humble people.  May you recognize the birth of Jesus in the ordinary, humble dimensions of your family life.  Maybe the youngest of your family is the birthing place of the Savior once more.