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November 30, 2007

The Virgin Mother, Her Child, and Advent

This Sunday finds us celebrating the First Sunday of Advent, that liturgical season of preparation and penitential reflection inaugurating a new church year. We often times forget that Advent was historically a penitential season: Many churches have abandoned the drab blue vestments for the more regal purple; Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent with festive rose vestments and joyful propers ("Gaudete in Domino semper," from the Introit) is M.I.A. since the spirit of Vatican II blew through town. No less, we many times leave the contemplative Mary out of our advental picture until Christmas Eve, when we picture the young mother wrapping her newborn in swaddling clothes, complete with ox and ass feeding on hay.

Over the past few days, First Things has hosted an excellent exchange on mariology and what the Mother of God means for Catholics and Evangelicals who are committed to substantive ecumenical dialogue. Today's post, by Matthew Levering, co-editor of Ave Maria University's theological journal Nova et Vera, discusses the centuries-old debate on Christ's "brothers and sisters": Certainly if the Messiah did have brothers and sisters the whole conception that there was no conception after His own would be placed in limbo. Noting that it was not until the fourth century that a theologian proposed that the "brothers and sisters" mentioned in the Gospel were born of Mary, Levering suggests that our exegesis of the relevant Gospel passages should be read with one eye to the text and the other to the guidance of the Holy Spirit as evidenced in the Church Father's rejection of a multiple-mother Mary.

It is Cornelius Plantinga's entry, however, that I found most instructive for reflection on how we ought to celebrate Advent.

Once more God chooses "what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Cor. 1:27). Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mary isn't blessed just because her womb bears Jesus and her breasts nurse him. She's blessed because she "hears the world of God and obeys it" (Luke 11:27-28). Moreover, she places herself in "God's own household" as "a servant of the Lord," and then, in her Magnificat, prophesies of the mighty acts of God in her, and among the generations, and in Israel, and everywhere the covenant with Abraham extends. She speaks politically, and she does so, as C. S. Lewis put it, "with a terrible gladness." The topic of the Magnificat is, once more, the kingdom of God and the revolutionary mercy and justice churning within it.

Advent is God coming to man, but ad + venere, "motion toward" + "to come," most certainly should apply to all of us as we prepare to meet the God Who assumed human flesh so as to suffer death and bring redemption. Like Mary, we too may be blessed as we hear, contemplate, and obey the Word; we too may move closer to Him, just as the lowly servant Mary came closer to God that "cold winter's night" so long ago.

Posted by Seth Zirkle at November 30, 2007 12:05 PM

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