Before coming to the readings, it seems significant to me that the Collect, or Opening Prayer, of the Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Advent is the same prayer we say at the end of the Angelus:
Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord,Apart from exempting the whole of his life (something that seems a constant in these matters), this is a pretty good summary of the Paschal Mystery, into which the liturgy seeks to immerse us. Noting this lacuna is what led Pope Saint John Paul II to promulgate the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary in his 2002 Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae.
your grace into our hearts,
that we to whom the incarnation of Christ your Son
was made known by the message of an Angel,
may by his Passion and Cross
be brought to the glory of his Resurrection
Our Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in Year C of the Sunday lectionary is a primer on the second mystery of the Joyful Mysteries of the Virgin Mary's Rosary. By way of reminder, this mystery is Mary's Visitation to her kinswoman, Elizabeth. The fruit of this mystery is love of neighbor. Of course, it is the Holy Spirit who is operative in the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth.
Because it comes from The Letter to the Hebrews and this letter, which many New Testament scholars believe is actually an extended sermon of sorts, is the longest "book" in our unquely Christian scriptures apart from Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans, and because it is a book I personally find fascinating, I want to focus on it.
Too often, Hebrews, as it is abbreviated, is dismissed as some kind of Platonistic anomaly. In fact, it is a great treatise on Christian life and discipleship, especially in adverse circumstances. In its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council, turned to the Letter to the Hebrews for its image of the Church as the Pilgrim People of God.
While, like the Collect, our reading from Hebrews seems to jump from birth to sacrificial death, skipping Jesus's life and ministry, I think there is significance in the opening lines from our passage: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me" (Heb 10:5). While a body is certainly a prerequiste for being nailed to the cross, at this point in the passage, the reason for being incarnated, as it were, is to do God's will (Heb 10:7). A body is necessary for enacting, incarnating, making concretely "real," the will of God.
We need to tread lightly when insisting it was the Father's will that his Son should suffer and die. If nothing else, this lets us off the hook far too easily. By his Incarnation, life, passion, and death, Christ accomplished in his own person what Israel, or any group of human beings, could not accomplish in/through its history: to fulfill the Law of God in letter and in spirit, thus accomplishing God's purpose in/through/for creation.
Christ fulfilled the Law, thus doing away with the need for "Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings" (Heb 10:8). A further effect of this is opening the one covenant God seeks to establish to all people. Hence, joining God's Pilgrim People is open to anyone who is up for the journey. As Michael Card so beautifully sings, "There Is a Joy In the Journey."
As Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (a most Christian story) reminds us year-after-year, Christmas is a time of conversion, a time to turn around and follow Jesus. May we, like Mr. Scrooge, come to realize the saving effects of the Incarnation in and through the circumstances of our own lives. I think this gives some reality to the petition asking God to "pour forth" his grace into our hearts. God's grace, as our Gospel shows, once poured into our hearts flows out to others. This is the "Spirit of Christmas."
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