Ask any young fiancée about her wedding plans and I am certain that besides looking forward to creating a home of her own, she has many dreams. Imagine how devastated she would be if something shattered her plans.
Now picture how Mary felt when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and disrupted her daily routine with the news that she was, not only favored by God, but that she, a virgin, would bear a son. For a bride to be pregnant nowadays is not so uncommon but back then that was scandalous. What went through Mary’s mind as the angel spoke to her? How would Joseph react? How could she explain this to anyone else?
Mary could have refused but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” If Mary had any misgivings, they were well concealed. In that moment, she offered herself up to God’s will and mysterious way.
Mary demonstrated to us an important lesson we can easily overlook, especially during the waning days of Advent when we have so much to get done from sending out cards to last minute shopping. I recall years ago when working in a bookstore a book, entitled, The Precious Present. Naively, I assume this had to do with some tangible gift along the lines of O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. I learned however that the precious present was the gift of time, the present moment, not something to be found under a tree. The most valued present we can give someone is our presence.
Giving of yourself is not like giving money or something that you purchased. Mary models what such a gift really means by her example. Reflecting on stories in the gospel that reveal the life of her son, we can see how Mary by her presence was never free to be just herself ever again after the angel departed from her that day in Nazareth.
Likewise, we who are on the receiving end of such a gift may not always appreciate what we are receiving. Sometimes we don’t realize just how much we are loved. Often the surest acts of love are manifested in humble and mundane moments as one husband discovered unexpectedly.
Having been married seven years, he and his wife found themselves raising a four-year-old son. He was busy with his work and pursing his M.B.A. She was consumed with the duties of motherhood and running the house. Their relationship had become one of “yawning” at each other.
One Christmas, they received a gift that changed their lives. The driveway was icy that morning as they got into their car to drive to her parents. Picking up her son to put him in the back seat, she slipped and shattered both bones in her right shin. That Christmas was spent in the hospital. “Some Christmas present,” she muttered dejectedly.
That was just the beginning. With her leg so badly broken, she had to stay in bed to recuperate. For her, that felt like a prison sentence. For him, he had to drop everything else he was doing and become Mr. Mom—cooking the meals, doing the laundry, bathing a squirming, crying kid, and cleaning the house. He longed to get back to school and his work, which to him was painless by comparison.
It dawned on him one evening at the kitchen sink, while scrubbing a dirty pan, that the view from the window was rather dismal. Then it hit him—she had been standing at that same sink for seven years, scrubbing those same dishes along with everything else that needed to be cleaned. “My God,” he realized, “She must really love me to do all this.” He then went to their bedroom, where she laid with her leg propped up on pillows, watching TV. Sharing his newfound admiration of her love, he said, “I just want you to know that I appreciate what you’ve done for me, for us. I never knew how much that was.” That moment was a turning point for them. Do our dreams need to be shattered to appreciate how much God loves us?
In the first reading, we learned that many millennia ago, King David sought to build an immense temple to house God but Nathan told him not to, for God had other plans. Instead of being contained within a temple God sought to be contained within a virgin’s womb so that he could give us the gift of his presence in the person of Jesus Christ. That happened because Mary opened wide her heart. God’s dream today is to find a home within our hearts as well. Are we willing to be as present to God as he is to us?
Mary’s example reminds me of a prayer written by a French mystic, Blessed Charles de Foucald. “Father, I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you. I am ready for all. I accept all. Let only your will be done in me and all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands, I commend my soul; I offer it to you with all the love of my heart; for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands without reserve and with boundless confidence.”
As we venture toward Christmas, may we be attentive to hearing the many annunciations of God’s love all around us; and may we welcome that divine love in our own lives and give birth to that love in the lives of others, seeking to be truly present to those whom we love.