Merciful justice

Today’s readings: Micah 5, 1-4; Hebrews 10, 5-10; Luke 1, 39-44.

On the last Sunday of our Advent journey this year, the Visitation is an icon that opens a window on how Christian living is meant to be a true sign and, I would say, evidence of the divine in the world. God speaks only the language of the incarnation and we still have a long way to go to grasp in depth what that entails.

Christmas is a narrative that, as with all other biblical narratives, has to become a proclamation. Otherwise we would simply have stories to tell with no impact at all on the present. This should make us radically question our perception of religion and it should keep us constantly awake to what religion in our lives is leading us to.

Today’s second reading from Hebrews says that God takes no pleasure in sacrifices, oblations, and holocausts. Which means that the way religion is very often perceived, in terms of a relationship with the divine based on symbols, myths, holocausts and sacrifices, in itself is prone to create blockages in our journey of faith rather than facilitate it.

This is precisely what Jesus came to correct in the way we relate with the God we believe in. He even sought to abolish all that, so as to teach us true worship. Like Mary and Elizabeth in today’s gospel, we ourselves are called to be the living tabernacle where God abides.

Mary and Elizabeth in today’s gospel show how the Christmas narrative is transformative when it becomes proclamation. It is this shift that probably remains missing not only in those who care less about Christmas, but unfortunately even in many of those who celebrate Christmas. This meeting between Mary and Elizabeth looks like a theological cross-road of promises fulfilled, of a long history reaching its peak. In their simplicity and transparency, these two women inaugurate the great truth of the Kingdom. Elizabeth is the last in a long list of women throughout the entire Old Testament who were barren and in old age. Mary is blessed because she believed.

Mary went to visit Elizabeth because Elizabeth was actually the sign given to her by the angel when he told her, almost to prove his point: “Your cousin Elizabeth also, in her old age, has conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month”.

John Saward writes in his book Redeemer in the Womb, “The chief actors in the Visitation episode are two babes in the womb, Jesus in Mary, John in Elizabeth, the Prince and the Prophet, the Word and the Voice”.

In this gospel, Mary is the sure sign of the transcendent in human history. This is especially evoked in Dante’s Paradiso: “Virgin mother, daughter of your son/Humbler and higher than all other creatures/Fixed aim and goal of the eternal plan”. Mary is most blessed of all women because in her there is God’s irruption in the history of mankind. A new world has its beginning in Mary’s womb.

This is also what the prophet Micah evokes in the first reading, speaking of “Bethlehem, the least of the clans of Judah”, and yet “out of you will be born for me the one who is to rule over Israel”.

As with so many of the other prophets, the historical background of the preaching of Micah is basically political, and more specifically it is the rampant corruption at the time of Ahaz the King. So it is understandable that Micah speaks of hope and of a future Messiah. His prophecy provides a typical chiaroscuro of threats and promises.

What Micah is here highlighting is God’s ‘merciful justice’, a radical novelty that may even sound contradictory to our perception of religion. But basically this is what the Christmas story is about: God definitively entered human history to provide the remedy of mercy against sin, corruption, injustice, and whatever continues to dehumanise our society.