Today’s readings: Micah 5,1-4 or Romans 8,28-30; Matthew 1,18-23.
Symbolically, Mary was the sacred space that could contain God’s powerful and gentle presence in the world. The world in biblical language is not always the place suitable to contain that presence. But Mary made it suitable by her indispensable assent, thus making possible the perfect union of the divine and the human.
The nativity of the blessed Virgin is an important date in our salvation history because the God we believe in is an incarnate God who needed a mother just like us. The birth and early life of Mary are not recorded in the gospels, yet the little we know is a well-sourced tradition that goes back to the so-called Protoevangelium of James in the second century.
What then grounds all that we believe about her are the Scriptures, which today confirm not only that she was in line with the house of David, but that in her, old prophecies can be seen as fulfilled. The feast of her nativity, which had its origin in the Eastern church, is celebrated as a major event that marked the beginning of the end, the dawn of salvation that restored hope to the entire world.
So much is attributed to Mary in Catholic doctrine that it may in the end come out as someone alien to the rest of us mortals: born without sin, gave birth and remained virgin, and was taken up to heaven. All that may sound very mythological, besides the fact that traces of it may even be found in other ancient religions that also struggle to render visibly the meeting between the human and the divine.
Mary signifies God’s own mysterious ways of operating divinely in human ways. Her close connection with Jesus Christ makes of her a perfectly new creation because, as St Augustine remarks, through her birth, nature itself is changed.
Today’s feast conveys a challenging message to a world so much in need of hope and amid the titanic undertakings of our modern age. Entire populations today can hardly speak of tomorrow, let alone of hope. We need tangible signs to look up to today in the same manner that in the midst of chaos and persecution, John, in the Book of Revelation, speaks of a great sign that appeared in heaven.
Life can turn out to be simply a routine of events with nothing to break the vicious circle. In the tradition of the churches, both Eastern and Western, Mary has always been celebrated as restoring rhythm back to life in the place of a killing routine. Our times seem to be too much entangled in an endless spiral of illusions, and we need powerful signs to get back on track and grab what can effectively nourish our faith and hope.
The Arab Spring that never was, the economic crisis that seems to linger on unendingly, threatening entire peoples with unemployment and poverty, and now the impending attack on Syria which may, after all, kill thousands and resolve nothing, all contribute to make hope fade away.
Can we still speak of hope in this scenario? We may be tempted to quit dreaming and just let things happen and go their way. Faith provides a different vision. Today’s celebration is not simply a birthday commemorated. The birth of Mary, the would-be mother of Jesus, speaks loud and clear that hope does not fall miraculously from heaven. Hope is also a human construct, it is ingrained in the human spirit which carries in it the image and likeness of the divine.
But that demands commitment and suggests that “the spatial closure which transforms the world into a global prison not only can but must be undone”. This is mainly a problem we all seem to have today with our vision of humanity and of nature. Accepting things as they are without believing they can be different, closes off all hope and makes of life not a sacred space but a place of boredom.
The Virgin Mary stands on a different ground and her story is a success story not in the sense we define success, but in the sense that it opens up marvelously human nature to God’s graceful and gentle presence. That is a new horizon that places hope again in our hearts.