A long-time, venerable member of my
parish asked to see me privately in my office one Sunday after mass
to discuss some church business. After she'd informed me of the
matter she said she had to mention another issue which had been on
her heart.
“Claire is pregnant,” she said.
This intelligence rattled my guts like
a sudden attack of appendicitis. Not Claire, I thought. Not the
fourteen-year-old I'd just confirmed who was such a good
student and had so much potential..! My heart crashed like a
led balloon.
I guess my faithful Church Lady saw a
little too much panic in my reaction and quickly told me, “You know
I mean my niece Claire, don't you?”
Thank you, Jesus, I thought. I'd
confused the member's pregnant teenaged niece, who lived at some
distance, with my not pregnant recent student. All the same I
promised to keep pregnant Claire in my prayers.
As I look at the appointed gospel
lesson for Advent 4 Year B (Luke 1:26-38), I am struck by the words of the angel to
Mary, “Do not be afraid.” When I thought Claire (my
Claire) was pregnant, I was most definitely afraid. And what I was
afraid of was her fear and how I, as her pastor, could
compassionately and honestly minister to it. When I was in seminary,
my pastoral care professor taught a lesson in ministering to un-wed
teen moms, but I'm not real sure that I'm up to the task.
Okay. We all acknowledge that kids have
sex. But here in blue-collar Northeast Philly, I still detect a
certain sneer that someone's teen daughter would be dumb enough to
get pregnant and cause a major disruption in the flow of family life.
What's worse is that some of my Roman colleagues in the Archdiocese
of Philadelphia (or, as I like to call it, the Archdiocese That Time
Forgot) still refuse to baptize a child born of unmarried parents—as
if it's somehow the baby's doing that mom and dad didn't get hitched!
Face it, the announcement the angel
Gabriel made to the Virgin Mary would not be particularly welcomed
should it come to any of our kids. How would we go about reassuring a
fourteen or fifteen year old American girl frightened by the shear
messiness of pregnancy and childbirth, by the intrusion the event
would cause in the normal pattern of growing up, and by the
totally-freaking-HUGE responsibility of being a parent?
But God's word to Mary and to us in
this gospel is, “Do not be afraid.”
In his essay on the Annunciation,
Martin Luther wrote lovingly and tenderly of Mary. He cited St.
Bernard of Clairvaux's contention that three miracles were taking
place in this story: God was becoming human, a virgin was conceiving,
and Mary was saying “yes” to all of this. Of the three, Luther
believed that little Mary's assent is the greatest of these miracles.
She must have been terribly frightened by the realization that she,
barely more than a child herself, was being chosen by God for a most
dangerous and difficult mission. She was an average girl of no
importance in the eyes of the world, and the stigma of unwed
pregnancy carried many more penalties in her time and culture than it
does in ours. Yet she choked back her fear and agreed to be the one
who carried Jesus for the sake of the world—just as each of us in
our own modest way is called to do in spite of our natural
trepidation.
How can we not love Mary? Her story is
so much our own. Like us, she was born and lived in a time of
violence and bitterness. Like us, she yearned for God's deliverance.
Like us, she greeted the news that God loved and favored her and had
a purpose for her with perplexity. And like us, she would know
moments of helplessness and feel the anguish of loss for one she
loved—even though she, in blind faith, was willing to utter the
words, “Let it be.”
And this is faith. It is the
willingness to face real fear in the belief that God will do a
powerful thing through little, unimportant us. And through us, this sinful
world will be brought blessings the end of which we cannot imagine.
Christmas blessings to you, my friends.
Go be bearers of Christ!
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