4th Sunday of Advent (C)

Sunday 22 December 2024
Lk 1,39-45

“Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry… ‘As soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’”
(Lk 1,41b-42.44-45)

Immediately after receiving the angel’s annunciation, Mary hurries to find Elizabeth, her relation who was also pregnant. According to tradition, Elizabeth lived in the present-day village of Ein Kerem, located 6km to the west of Jerusalem. Mary entered Elizabeth’s house and greeted her. At that very moment, on hearing Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child – John the Baptist – leaps in his mother’s womb. John leaps for joy at Mary’s presence, or rather, at the presence of Jesus in Mary’s womb. The encounter between the two women actually creates the encounter between Jesus and His precursor: the one who will prepare a people well disposed to welcome the coming Lord! This joyful encounter marks the passage from the promise to its fulfilment, the embrace that bridges the Old and New Testament, giving continuity to God’s saving plan. As Saint Augustine says, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old becomes manifest in the New.

From its very first notes, Luke’s Gospel expresses, and repeats several times, the essence of the good news: joy! Joy is the characteristic of the Christian, one who has found their treasure, the one who savours the gift and the gratuitousness of salvation in Jesus. Many times we confuse joy with a fleeting feeling, but it is in truth a fruit of the Holy Spirit (cfr. Gal 5:22). It is a spiritual power that allows us to bear witness despite everything: I can be, and am called to be joyful, even and above all in difficulties and trials. Joy cannot coexist with sadness, but it can coexist with pain! Not infrequently, we see sick or suffering people who, despite this, transmit a strength, a desire to live, a motivation that refers to the supernatural; this joy in its purest form. In the Book of the prophet Nehemiah (8:10) it is written: “The joy of the Lord is your strength!”. It is the quality of the Christian, which does not necessarily manifest itself in jumping or laughing, but always gives strength and keeps the believer on the path of life, despite everything.

So, let us strip ourselves of the mentality and attitudes of sadness that have nothing to do with the new and eternal Covenant, and let us be moved inwardly by the Holy Spirit to rejoice in the presence of Him who can do everything.

p. Giuseppe