And
in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God
unto
a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
To
a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph,
of
the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
And
the angel came in unto her, and said,
Hail,
thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee:
blessed art thou among women.
And
when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying,
and
cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.
And
the angel said unto her,
Fear
not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
And,
behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb,
and
bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He
shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest:
and
the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
And
he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and
of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Then
said Mary unto the angel,
How
shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And
the angel answered and said unto her,
The
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,
and
the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:
therefore also that holy thing which shall be
born of thee
shall be called the Son of God.
And,
behold, thy cousin Elisabeth,
she
hath also conceived a son in her old age:
and
this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
For
with God nothing shall be impossible.
And
Mary said,
Behold
the handmaid of the Lord;
be
it unto me according to thy word.
And
the angel departed from her.
I wonder if in our age,
the idea of The Most High has become an alien concept. For nearly 150 years, our Western culture has
been steeping in a soup of Darwinist evolutionary theory, garnished in the academy
with Nietzschean materialistic atheism, and medically applied to the masses in soulless
Freudian psychology. This triumvirate of
atheistic materialists laid the foundations of modern movements in education,
politics, and philosophy which convulsed the world into a century of world wars,
culminating in the social upheaval and despair of our current day. When we look around our world today and see
people acting less rational than animals, with no moral compass but temporary
pleasure and their own will to power, where the life of the mind is reduced to
nonsensical ramblings and bio-chemical reactions, and the beauty of the soul is
twisted into avarice and perpetual victimhood, we see the lived out experience
of our ill fated attempts at self-deification.
Without reference to The Most High God whose Kingdom and Word shall
endure forever, we are left with the paltry heights of man’s fallen corruption,
like those who celebrate the heaping up of dung hills while ignoring the majesty
of soaring mountain peaks behind them.
With eyes blinded, ears deafened, minds darkened, and hearts hardened
against the truth of The Most High, the heights of human achievement become
ever deepening caverns into which we fall.
And yet, our time is not
really so unlike that in which the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin
Mary, announcing glad and holy tidings.
Then as now, the strong sought and seized power, the impious manipulated
the material world to their passions, the academics thought up justifications
for violence and debauchery, and the hearts of the faithful huddled in this
worldly darkness enlightened by the Word of the Lord, awaiting the coming of His
Word Made Flesh who would scatter all darkness and usher in a never-ending age
of light and life. To blessed Mary this Word of the Lord came, and in her was
conceived by the power of God Almighty, the Son of the Highest. In her womb was the greatest miracle ever to
be contemplated, greater even than the creation of the universe itself: Jesus, fully God according to the indivisible
essence of His Father, and fully man according to the sinless humanity He
received of His mother, united in one Divine Person through whom mankind would
be reconciled to the Most Holy Trinity. The
Incarnation of Jesus is the Advent of the Word of God Made Flesh who dwells
among us, full of grace and truth, who is Himself the light and life of the
world. This is the Word which was spoken
to create the cosmos, now united to His creation by inseparable bonds in the Person
of Jesus Christ, to whom has been given the Eternal Kingdom in which forgiveness,
life, and salvation are poured out freely by grace to all who repent and
believe in Him. This is the Light of
World which no darkness can overcome, or according to their own fallen powers
of reason, even comprehend. This is
Jesus, born of Mary, the Son of the Highest.
To be sure, the lure of
self important scholars, politicians, and the hedonistic rabble, seated upon
the dunghills of their various theories and accomplishments, calling out for applause
and obeisance from their dark caverns of misery, remain among us to this
day. There will always be another
Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, or a myriad of their intellectually and spiritually blind
disciples calling the world to follow them into ever deeper and darker recesses
of human depravity. But despite them
all, the Light of the World still shines forth in the Incarnate Word of God who
dwells among us, who has reconciled God and man in His own Person through His
life, death, and resurrection. Like
blessed Mary, the Word of the Lord comes to us in the darkness of our world and
declares us blessed and highly favored by the wonders of His grace. To us the angelic choir sings the Gloria in Excelsis,
inviting our voices to join theirs as we sing glory to God in the Highest, and
on earth, peace, good will toward men.
Hear the Word of the Lord
come to you this day, to open your eyes that you may see, unstop your ears that
you may hear, uncloud your mind that you may perceive, and unburden your soul
that you may believe all that the Son of the Highest has done for you. And may we all, with the Blessed Virgin Mary,
respond in faith that we are the servants of the Lord, and that the saving
grace of the Lord’s Gospel be fulfilled in us according to His Eternal Word. Amen.
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