Fourth Sunday of Advent
Bishop of Lake Charles
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
December 23, 2012
Fourth Sunday of Advent
“For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.” Luke 1:44
In my Advent message for this Year of Faith, I mentioned that faith was an embrace, an embrace we make spiritually and intellectually of the truth of Jesus Christ, revealed by the Scriptures and the Church. This embrace is the embrace of a beloved with a lover. God is the lover. It is God who first loves us, as St. John teaches (I John 4:10). We must return that love.
I also mentioned in the same message that one very important way we make the faith real in our lives is through acts of devotion. I have heard it said of married couples, “Look at how devoted he is as a husband” or “Isn’t she a devoted wife and mother.” This observation is made because people observe that the husband and wife exhibit their love in their attitude of kindness to one another, in their gestures of gentleness, and in their willingness to help each other in the duties of married life. The desire to help around the house, share chores, guide their children, work out their problems—these are all living signs that a husband and wife are devoted to one another.
When I was a pastor in a parish, I remember a particular husband and wife who were devoted to one another. The wife became terminally ill and was bedridden. The husband did everything for her. When finally her life drew to a close, she had remained motionless until a remarkable thing happened. The husband recounted that on the day she passed away, suddenly she opened her eyes, sat up in bed, looked at her husband, said “I love you,” and fell back to the pillow breathing her last. It reminded me of the death of St. Bernadette, as some have recounted it. She did the same, exclaiming simply, “I love.” This experience is not isolated. It comes as the culmination to a life of devotion.
Consider the beautiful Gospel we just read. Mary goes “in haste” (Luke 1:39) to visit her cousin. She wants to share her joy and the joy of Elizabeth at the birth of their sons. The Gospel tells us that “the infant leaped” in the womb of Elizabeth as soon as Mary’s greeting reached her ears (Luke 1:41). Like David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, John leaps before the Ark of the New Covenant. Mary holds within her the Savior of the world, who will redeem in a New Covenant sealed with His own blood.
In the mysteries of the rosary, we call this the Visitation. It is an act of devotion. It is like our visits to the Blessed Sacrament. We go, and something happens. We do not understand, and we ask the question of Elizabeth, “[H]ow does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). Here is the language of devotion. This is the language of the beloved, surprised at what happens in the encounter with the lover, the grandmother smothered with affection by her grandchildren, the person who hasn’t seen his friend in a long time and is overcome with joy at the visit.
It is the language of the beloved who discovers God in prayer, in his or her devotions. Devotion is how faith expresses itself. “Blessed are you who believed,” (Luke 1:45), Elizabeth says of Mary, and her devotion is fulfilled. She believed that what was spoken by the Lord would be accomplished. Faith, true faith, the faith that moves mountains, runs in haste to express its devotion. There is a lesson here for all of us.