“Gabriel greeted her: Good morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, Beautiful inside and out! God be with you. She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, “Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.”” (Lk 1:27-28 from “The Message: Remix The Bible in Contemporary Language”, by Eugene H. Peterson)

Words are very important and sometimes we become so used to words we hear that we need to hear them in a different way, with a different voice and a different cadence to bring life back into them and hear them as they truly are meant to be heard and understood. Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It is a wonderful way to remember, as our Gospel for the day teaches, that Our Blessed Mother, Mary, was chosen to bear the Word of God, Jesus, in her womb as the Mother of God.
In reality, we can often gloss over the importance of the “words” because the become so familiar that they almost loose their power and meaning. This is why, at times, I like to rehear words that I know well and let them roll about my brain in a different way. You hear the truth of the power of words in many different ways. In the last of the Harry Potter movies Dumbledore, in talking to Harry in the “limbo” of life tells him, “Words, in my not so humble opinion, are an almost inexhaustible source of magic, capable of inflicting injury and remedying it.”
In the tradition of our faith, we are, in reflecting on Sacred Scripture, place ourselves in the very scene and take time to ponder and absorb the Word of God in this way. Because the injury of the words of Adam and Eve begin to find their remedy in the “yes” of Mary.
As I place myself with Mary and hear the Angel Gabriel speak…”Good morning!” Words that roll off my tongue without much thought now draw me to attention. To spark my mind into a rapid and wondrous moment of the speechless moment when you want to say almost everything but nothing is possible. God chose Mary for a very specific mission and he has chosen me and each and every person for a very specific mission that only you and I can do…have we listened to the greeting from God that comes to us, maybe not in the voice of an Archangel, but in the voice of love and greeting from friend, neighbor or family? Do we choose to listen carefully or are we to often occupied and distracted to hear the true meaning behind the words? Do we miss the beauty of being called?
“You’re beautiful with God’s beauty. Beautiful inside and out!” This is what it means to be “full of grace” I know from my own experience on many occasions I don’t hear the second part of the greeting. I hear the “good morning” but miss the blessing behind it or I say the “good morning” without taking time to see the person who receives the greeting from my lips. God doesn’t miss this with us…He sees and speaks the words of blessing…He sees how he made each of us as individuals and commands his angels to speak those words of beauty. If we have ears to hear?
Mary chose to hear and believed even when Gabriel says, “you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you.” I think if I heard this I would literally groan inside…do I want a surprise from God? Am I afraid of God’s surprises?
This is the blessing of Mary in our Advent journey. We see the joy that comes from God’s surprise and how if we listen with attentive ears to the greetings of God then we need not be afraid and jump into the surprises of life.
God Bless
Fr. Mark