Today’s Gospel according to Luke 1: 26-38.
Today’s party can be said that it is also the party of all of us. And Virgin Mary appears as the first fruit of the whole community. The first saved by the Passover of Christ. The first disciple of Christ. The first Christian. The figure and the summary of everything that the Church wants to be. We can say once more: «You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the pride of our race.»
It can even be said that all humanity finds cause for joy in it. We are not so bad, when one of our race has been the object of God’s blessing and has known how to respond to him with that spiritual elegance. In today’s preface we praise God, not only because in Mary he prepared a «worthy Mother for her Son», but also because he wanted her to be «the beginning and image of the Church, the bride of Christ, full of youth and clean beauty. «.
As Adam called his wife «Eve», which means «mother of the living», so Mary is the new Eve, and we can contemplate her as a model of faith, a reason for hope, Mother of the living, because she gave us Christ and She herself welcomed with joy the salvation that her Son brought to humanity. Today we rejoice because we intuit what is also for all of us God’s plan of salvation, which he has begun to fulfill in Our Lady. All humanity has benefited from it.
Fr. Antonio Majeesh George Kallely, ofm
(Fraternity of Santa María de Guadalupe, Spain)
