Lord, help me to be open to You & the promptings of the Holy Spirit
3rd Week of Advent (B) : Thursday 21st December 2023
Songs 2:8-14 or Zeph. 3:14-18a;
Ps. 32:2-3,11-12,20-21;
Lk. 1:39-45 (Ps. Wk. III)
God’s love creates the whole universe and holds all creation into being. In the first reading, the love poetry, the Song of Songs, celebrates the beauty of a wedding, the fear of separation, and the joy of love and union between man and woman, shared by the Lover and the Beloved.
In God’s appointed time, the Word of God takes flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, born of a woman named Mary. Mary’s “Yes” in the Annunciation makes it possible for the Son of God to be born and live among us, full of grace and truth.
By His incarnation, Christ enters our sinful humanity and re-creates the world; as we hear in the Song of Songs, the winter of sin and death is past and ended, and the springtime of grace and new life comes.
God visits His people as Mary, bearing Jesus in her womb, visits Elizabeth. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, greeted Mary with honour and proclaimed Mary ‘the Mother of my Lord’ and the fruit of Mary’s womb ‘blessed’.
This Visitation celebrates Mary’s willingness and humility to say “Yes” to God and intensify the joy, delight and praise that God will save His people from sin and shame. Elizabeth’s words and actions invite us to reflect on how our openness and docility to God who intervenes in our daily lives.
Lord, we pray for the grace to listen to the prompting of the Spirit when the bearers of God’s new reality show up at our doorsteps.
homepage zähler Shalom hits from 1st December 2019