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The Season of Advent Begins Anew

By Father Allan Weinert, CSsR

Two thousand years ago, when the Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar ruled the world, a small family lived in a village that hardly anyone had ever heard of. The village is called Nazareth. Nazareth was a dusty, obscure, unimportant place. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament nor in history books.

In this ordinary village the family of Joseph the carpenter resided. It would be difficult to imagine that they lived continually in the silence of adoration and love. Most likely they lived amid the noise of ordinary life. They had their relatives close by and there must have been petty talk, celebrations, jealousies, and gossip.
When night came and the workshops were closed and the doors and windows of their home were shut to block out the street noise, those three would sit around a table for a meal. I wonder what they talked about. The Gospels do not record what they said. We would be comfortable with a conversation with that family. They used the ordinary words of the rest of the people, words for tools, food, drink, and clothes. But the thoughts that Mary pondered could not be put into words.

In the beginning, some of those events were strange and frightening. The prophecy of Gabriel promised Mary that her son would be called most high and that all nations would bow before him. There were many days when no one called Jesus “Son of the Most High.” No one bowed before him and he had no throne. Another woman, remembering such things, might have turned to less disturbing thoughts. But Mary treasured the words as the years of obscurity slipped by. She guarded them in her heart. She did not betray them, perhaps even to her son.

Jesus grew and became a boy, then a teen-ager, and then a man — an ordinary Galilean laborer bent over the workbench. After twenty or thirty years, did Mary still believe that all generations would call her blessed? After the nativity and the flight into Egypt the heavens closed and the angels disappeared. From year to year the mother of the carpenter might have believed she had a dream if she had not continually remained in the presence of the Father.
Meditation on that mystery began in the dusty lanes of an unimportant village. Mary, waiting, reflecting, listening, becomes the mother. Mary is not only the physical but also the spiritual mother of God because she constantly pondered the Word of God. We believe that what God has done for Mary, he will do for us.

Those two thousand years have not diminished the voice of John the Baptist telling us, each in our own way, to prepare the way of the Lord. Advent invites us to prepare again to receive Christ who depends on us every day to bring him into the world. We give time to pondering the events of our lives in our hearts and meditate on the mystery of the Living Word within us, even when we cannot understand, even when things are strange or frightening, or when they are just so ordinary. By giving time to pondering in our hearts the image of God, and trusting what he said will come about, we too will be part of bringing forth the Son of God.

(Father Weinert was editor of LIGUORIAN Magazine from 1989 to 2002. Currently he is Treasurer of the Denver Province of Redemptorists.)