A Call To Be Generous With Our Time

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C

St. Gerard Majella Church

Baton Rouge, LA, USA

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Beloved in Christ Jesus, Christmas is almost here! All shopping malls are crowded by people trying to make a last minute shopping. The streets are all decorated with beautiful Christmas trees and lights. Many homes are looking very nice and smelling better too. Christmas songs/carols are being sung on radio and TV. People are happy; children are excited. People are having Christmas party and having rare fun. The whole environment is seriously charged. Even atheists know that something is happening. They know that this season is quite different from others. Christmas is a season of the beloved. It is the most pleasant of all the seasons. 

In today’s Gospel (Luke 1:39-45), we read of the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth, which is often referred to as the visitation. But something more is going on than just one expectant mother visiting another. Both of these women were called and chosen by God to play important roles in the salvation of humanity. Both women are pregnant. Mary carries the unborn Jesus in her womb; Elizabeth carries the unborn John the Baptist, the one who will announce the coming of Christ.  Both of these women’s lives have been touched in different ways by the Holy Spirit. And they are vitally important to God becoming Immanuel, to God being with us, to God dwelling among us as One who is truly like us. 

But the meeting of two mothers is also the meeting of their two sons- Jesus and John the Baptist. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for great joy. In this meeting, the Greatest of all (Jesus) meets a great prophet (John the Baptist). In the encounter between the two women, God greets a human being. In this encounter, the last prophet of the Old Testament meets the New Testament and the one the Old Testament spoke about.

But the visitation event is more than a nice story. It is also an invitation for us to deepen our faith and trust in God’s love and promise. It is a call to care, to share and to love. The story of the visitation calls us to be generous with our time and to fellowship more with one another. When Mary was told by the Angel that Elizabeth, who was called barren is pregnant with a child, she did not sit back. The Gospel says “She set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” How many of our church members have we bothered to visit or to call in this ending year of 2012? When we hear that a church member is sick, do we bother to call him/her? Do we keep the sick in our prayers? When a parishioner does not attend Mass again, do we try to find out why? Mary and Elizabeth were unique in what God asked of them. Each of us too has a unique role to play in the salvation of all. Let’s remember always that Jesus is not going to be born again as a little child in a manger, but he needs to continually be born again in our lives, in our hearts, in our families, in our church, in our society and in our world.