December 23, 2000 -- 4th Sunday of Advent "C"

H O M I L Y

An important feature of the popular celebration of Christmas is the crib. We see cribs everywhere: in churches, in stores, in private homes, out on lawns... The main figures that appear in those cribs are usually the same: Joseph, Mary and Jesus, of course, showing in general the characteristics of the race of the artist or of whoever made the small statues. Then, the shepherds are added on Christmas night, to be replaced later on by the Magi. And, obviously, there is always the star over the crib, with all kinds of technical devices that make it flash at regular intervals, etc.

If we examine the details given by the two Gospels that tell us about Jesus' birth, we realize that no one of these two Gospels has all those details. Our cribs express a form of reconstruction of the facts starting from a few details given by Luke and Matthew.

Moreover what we should not forget is that both Luke and Matthew, in these first chapters of their Gospels, are not trying to give us an historical description of the first events of Jesus' life. They are already teaching us about what will be the central element of their Gospel: discipleship.

The teaching of Jesus in Luke's Gospel appears mostly in the trip from Galilee to Jerusalem. Apart from being a geographic movement, that trip is also a theological theme, a manner for Jesus to form his disciples to what will be his journey, to glory through suffering. To a would-be disciple who wants to follow him Jesus says: Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place where to rest his head. According to Luke, Jesus began his life in insecurity, far from his parents' home, in a crib, -- all of this being a symbol of his rejection by the leaders of the people of Israel who had no place for him in their tradition. The trajectory of his life begins in Luke's Gospel without a place for him in the inn, and ends up without a place in the heart of his people. Jesus' response to the would-be disciple expresses that vulnerability and insecurity is a condition to become his disciple, a total openness to anything that obedience to Jesus Christ may mean.

Luke anticipates all this teaching in his first two chapters. The first expression of it is Mary, who is the model of every disciple who listens to God's word and puts it in practice. Luke's narrative expresses the unexpected ways of the Lord, in continuation with the O.T. God chooses a young Jewish virgin from a tiny village in Galilee. Now Galilee was a northern province, despised by the more sophisticated Jews of Judea. One of the reasons was that a large number of Gentiles lived there, so that you could not be sure of the ritual purity even of the Jews themselves.

Not only does God come to visit that humble little girl. It is through her and in her that he comes to visit the rest of humankind. In the Old Testament, in the Second Book of Samuel (2 S 6:2-11) there is a very colorful description of the transfer of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. The Ark, which is the symbol of God's presence, rests in the house of Obed-Edom and it is a source of great blessing for the house. David also dances before the Ark. Luke takes up all these details in today's Gospel, in his description of Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth. Like the Ark, Mary undertakes the journey from Galilae towards Jerusalem through the mountains of Samaria. The same manifestations of joy take place, including the sacred dance performed by John the Baptist in his mother's womb, just like David had danced before the Ark. And the glad cry of Elizabeth as she greets Mary reproduces almost verbally that of David as he stood before the Ark.

Mary is the true Ark of the Covenant, bringing God's presence to everyone she visits. But all of this is done with an extraordinary ordinariness, with a beautiful touch of humanity.

It's all of this that should come to our mind when we look at a crib. The crib should not be simply another superficial expression of the festive spirit of the deason, but a reminder that God is coming to us to ask us to be his disciples, and that discipleship consists in and begins with accepting the challenges of littleness, vulnerability and insecurity.

Armand VEILLEUX