Fourth Sunday of Advent/B
Massimo Palombella
Today’s Gospel (Lk 1:26-38), as Christmas approaches, presents us with the Annunciation of the angel to Mary.
Mary’s response to the angel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: let it be to me according to your word,” is well known and perhaps also, in everyday habit, is in danger of becoming a little taken for granted. In fact, handing over one’s life to the Lord is a daily journey that always requires a new understanding, a renewal. Sometimes, the Lord leads us through unforeseen events – such as an illness, a great difficulty – to hand over, almost ‘necessarily’, something of our life to Him and then, imperceptibly within an instinct of ‘survival’, take it back and guard it jealously.
Mary’s availability to God touches the essentiality of our being Christians. Indeed, ‘religious practice’ alone does not automatically define an identity. Being Christian is a way of thinking, of reading and interpreting reality, it is making the fundamental choices in life having the Lord as the first criterion of discernment (and not, for example, exclusively, money, tranquillity, a career, emotional security…). To be a Christian is to earn slowly – and not without effort – that freedom which is the healthy detachment from things, which is the substantial and daily surrender to God in the certainty that it is He who leads history, and that He will lead me where the true good for me is to be found.
Here, on the essentials of our Christian being, the Lord is waiting for us, perhaps more aware of our life than we were at Christmas last year, perhaps more tired, perhaps more available to Him, or perhaps angry and closed in on ourselves… In any case He is waiting for us patiently to love us as we now need to be loved, and to lead us gently to be who we can and must be…
We need not fear if we do not feel adequate to Him, ready for His love… The Lord enters our lives only to love us in whatever situation we are in. We must not doubt in the least that we are unworthy of Him because “His coming is as sure as the dawn” (Hos 6:3).
The entrance antiphon, the Introit, the Ingressa in the Ambrosian Rite, of today’s celebration is taken from chapter 45 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (Is 45:8) with the following text:
“Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant Iustum:
aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem.”
(Skies, let the Just One come forth like the dew, let him descend from the clouds like the rain.
The earth will open up and give birth to our Saviour).
The attached music, in Ambrosian Chant, is taken from the Antiphonale Missarum Iuxta Ritum Sanctæ Ecclesiæ Mediolanensis, published in Rome in 1935, which, to date, is the only “official” book of Ambrosian Chant for the Eucharistic Celebration. In the Ambrosian Rite, this antiphon is currently placed on the 3rd Sunday of Advent. The live interpretation is by the Musical Chapel of the Duomo of Milan at the Chapter Celebration on 26 November 2023.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
