Isaiah 61:7-11/Galatians 4:4-7/St Luke 1:(39-45)46-55
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, St Elizabeth, the mother of the Forerunner of our Lord, intoned with liturgical cadence, “Blessed are you, Virgin Mary, among women, and blessed is the Fruit of your womb!” I’m not sure it counts, being only half a Hail Mary. But St Mary, the Mother of God, said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has regarded, the humility of His maidservant.
We shall indeed follow the lead of the drum majorette of the Church Militant. After all, St Mary elsewhere said, Do whatever He tells you. Mother knows best.
Mother Mary speaks words of wisdom for by the Word of the Lord that came to her in bewilderment, St Mary believed and confessed that which is most certainly true: the Child within her womb is God. The Lord God of heaven and earth, whose majesty and glory fill the heavens and the earth, was confined in the single celled zygote, the Sperma, the Seed of the Woman, come to crush the skull of the devil and supplant His entire kingdom. God became a fetus.
In that moment of incarnation and conception, the Holy Spirit brought that infinitely small cell into existence by a special action upon the Virgin Mary. At that moment the Son of God, the Man from heaven, identified with all people who have ever been and who will ever be conceived. The One who was of Infinite worth because He is the Son of God, has given all men infinite worth by becoming Man. And the sacredness of human life has been raised to an even higher dimension than what can be observed by reason and experience because the Word was made flesh.
St Mary is rightly called blessed, though she in fact despises herself, and gives thanks to God for having regard for her lowliness. For the truth is we are not a collection of individuals. We are all taken from the flesh of Adam and the Earth Man is our first father. Thus we are all part of one another; not some metaphysical, hyper-spiritual way, but in the most tangible, fleshly way. We are all one flesh. And on account of the first Adam and first Eve, not to mention our own most grievous faults, that flesh is wasting away and rotting.
But Christ came as the Second Adam so that we could all have God in Him. By His Incarnation, the eternal Logos permeated all of humanity and all of humanity became part of Him.
Now through the Incarnation, the Son of God, shares in the life of every man, woman, and child - not only those born, but those conceived and never born. Because of that moment of that conception, we are all without race or gender, without culture or inheritance, without language or skill. We stand with the first Adam coram Deo, before God, and hear a verdict of condemnation.
But we stand with the Second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, coram Deo, and hear a verdict of righteous acquittal and justification, of holiness and innocence, the likes of which even the child in the womb has never known. If live, which exists between the conception of one simple cell and a fully developed baby, is so insignificant that it can be snuffed out, then our Lord’s life within His mother’s womb was equally insignificant and we would be without hope and without salvation.
But Life within the womb of the Virgin Mary was the most significant of all lives, and His conception raised to a new level that which was already sacred before God the Father. The womb of the Virgin was, as Luther says, and you sang, the majestic throne of God. For that St Mary is honored among all women blessed throughout all generations for being the Mother of God.
Yet it is not her, but her Son, who within His throne room receives the worship and adoration of John the Baptist, who though unborn, was the greatest of all the prophets. There, the One who ruled as God and King of all, in all humanity, put all His trust in God His Father. Thus the Church may bend the knee when we confess, He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man, but we stand at the crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, recognizing that tyrannical rule of a pagan government, though the mask of God, does not always conform her actions to His good and gracious will. The Cross may be a divine must, but the murder of the Holy Innocent was still unjust.
Yet do we regard it as the exultation of He who made Himself nothing for us, that in Him we might be exalted. For there Life was terminated in the most violent of ways; yet death does not remain. There the Child of Mary was torn apart from His Father and His mother; yet He makes you whole. There He who was unwanted, unplanned, unreceived, was expediently put to death; yet He has bestowed upon you the right to be child of His Father in heaven.
St Mary rejoiced that God had regard for her. This is the highest and chief blessing, from which all other blessings, grace, salvation, gifts, and even good works, must follow. Beloved, blessed in the Lord, He has had regard for you; knowing you before He even formed you in the womb; knitting you together, forming your inmost parts.
If John the Baptist confessed the faith by an unarticulated leap in his mother’s womb at the voice of the Mother of God, then perhaps God in His infinite mercy might provide a word of redemption which these children could hear and believe before their lives are snuffed out. And if their lights are not permitted to shine before men to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps they can still shine in heaven.
But maybe we are treading into the land of divine mysteries where human trespass is forbidden. But we do so not only out of great frustration, but out of the knowledge that those children who have been sacrificed in the womb have been redeemed by the One who lived in the womb. Will He who reigned over heaven and earth fro His mother’s womb and He who in His infancy escaped the hand of the butcher King Herod, not pray before His God and Father in heaven for those form whom no way of escape is provided?
May our souls, like the Virgin Mary’s, magnify the Lord and our spirits rejoice in God our Savior. His mercy is upon those who fear Him. He raises the lowly and humbles the proud. May He who has out of the mouths of babes and infants ordained strength, mortify and kill all vices in us and so strengthen us with His grace that by the innocency of our lives and the constancy of our faith, we may glorify His holy Name.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, St Elizabeth, the mother of the Forerunner of our Lord, intoned with liturgical cadence, “Blessed are you, Virgin Mary, among women, and blessed is the Fruit of your womb!” I’m not sure it counts, being only half a Hail Mary. But St Mary, the Mother of God, said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has regarded, the humility of His maidservant.
We shall indeed follow the lead of the drum majorette of the Church Militant. After all, St Mary elsewhere said, Do whatever He tells you. Mother knows best.
Mother Mary speaks words of wisdom for by the Word of the Lord that came to her in bewilderment, St Mary believed and confessed that which is most certainly true: the Child within her womb is God. The Lord God of heaven and earth, whose majesty and glory fill the heavens and the earth, was confined in the single celled zygote, the Sperma, the Seed of the Woman, come to crush the skull of the devil and supplant His entire kingdom. God became a fetus.
In that moment of incarnation and conception, the Holy Spirit brought that infinitely small cell into existence by a special action upon the Virgin Mary. At that moment the Son of God, the Man from heaven, identified with all people who have ever been and who will ever be conceived. The One who was of Infinite worth because He is the Son of God, has given all men infinite worth by becoming Man. And the sacredness of human life has been raised to an even higher dimension than what can be observed by reason and experience because the Word was made flesh.
St Mary is rightly called blessed, though she in fact despises herself, and gives thanks to God for having regard for her lowliness. For the truth is we are not a collection of individuals. We are all taken from the flesh of Adam and the Earth Man is our first father. Thus we are all part of one another; not some metaphysical, hyper-spiritual way, but in the most tangible, fleshly way. We are all one flesh. And on account of the first Adam and first Eve, not to mention our own most grievous faults, that flesh is wasting away and rotting.
But Christ came as the Second Adam so that we could all have God in Him. By His Incarnation, the eternal Logos permeated all of humanity and all of humanity became part of Him.
Now through the Incarnation, the Son of God, shares in the life of every man, woman, and child - not only those born, but those conceived and never born. Because of that moment of that conception, we are all without race or gender, without culture or inheritance, without language or skill. We stand with the first Adam coram Deo, before God, and hear a verdict of condemnation.
But we stand with the Second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, coram Deo, and hear a verdict of righteous acquittal and justification, of holiness and innocence, the likes of which even the child in the womb has never known. If live, which exists between the conception of one simple cell and a fully developed baby, is so insignificant that it can be snuffed out, then our Lord’s life within His mother’s womb was equally insignificant and we would be without hope and without salvation.
But Life within the womb of the Virgin Mary was the most significant of all lives, and His conception raised to a new level that which was already sacred before God the Father. The womb of the Virgin was, as Luther says, and you sang, the majestic throne of God. For that St Mary is honored among all women blessed throughout all generations for being the Mother of God.
Yet it is not her, but her Son, who within His throne room receives the worship and adoration of John the Baptist, who though unborn, was the greatest of all the prophets. There, the One who ruled as God and King of all, in all humanity, put all His trust in God His Father. Thus the Church may bend the knee when we confess, He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man, but we stand at the crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, recognizing that tyrannical rule of a pagan government, though the mask of God, does not always conform her actions to His good and gracious will. The Cross may be a divine must, but the murder of the Holy Innocent was still unjust.
Yet do we regard it as the exultation of He who made Himself nothing for us, that in Him we might be exalted. For there Life was terminated in the most violent of ways; yet death does not remain. There the Child of Mary was torn apart from His Father and His mother; yet He makes you whole. There He who was unwanted, unplanned, unreceived, was expediently put to death; yet He has bestowed upon you the right to be child of His Father in heaven.
St Mary rejoiced that God had regard for her. This is the highest and chief blessing, from which all other blessings, grace, salvation, gifts, and even good works, must follow. Beloved, blessed in the Lord, He has had regard for you; knowing you before He even formed you in the womb; knitting you together, forming your inmost parts.
If John the Baptist confessed the faith by an unarticulated leap in his mother’s womb at the voice of the Mother of God, then perhaps God in His infinite mercy might provide a word of redemption which these children could hear and believe before their lives are snuffed out. And if their lights are not permitted to shine before men to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps they can still shine in heaven.
But maybe we are treading into the land of divine mysteries where human trespass is forbidden. But we do so not only out of great frustration, but out of the knowledge that those children who have been sacrificed in the womb have been redeemed by the One who lived in the womb. Will He who reigned over heaven and earth fro His mother’s womb and He who in His infancy escaped the hand of the butcher King Herod, not pray before His God and Father in heaven for those form whom no way of escape is provided?
May our souls, like the Virgin Mary’s, magnify the Lord and our spirits rejoice in God our Savior. His mercy is upon those who fear Him. He raises the lowly and humbles the proud. May He who has out of the mouths of babes and infants ordained strength, mortify and kill all vices in us and so strengthen us with His grace that by the innocency of our lives and the constancy of our faith, we may glorify His holy Name.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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