homily broadcast by Vatican Radio and Radio Rai 1
(12/08/2009) at 9.30 am and Mass celebrated by Father Egidio Picucci.
If it is true that the Gospel is good news, today announces to men the most incredible: a humble woman of our people are so full of grace that even an angel is pleased with her choice to be the Mother of God . is shared with her creation, innocent as God had created. We share ourselves to a future of goodness, grafted on the roots of which she was full of grace.
Advent we are living, and that is a beautiful time of year so as to be considered a prolonged and pleasant Christmas Eve, in the Immaculate is the dawn, not only suggests how we should prepare for more nice event of history, but also reminds us how God has prepared
In our incurable impatience, we are content with four weeks of preparation, in his mysterious retirement, he devoted himself instead of God from all eternity. The difference in behavior is due to the fact that we are content to prepare the environment, houses, squares, and God meant to prepare people "according to his will, we have heard read in Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
And above all, a person is prepared before it was born. This "fitting home" of the Son of God, as we said in the opening prayer of today's liturgy, is a pure maiden of Galilee, named Mary.
As a bride she has brought with it a modest dowry, as a mother has had such an abundance of grace that the Angel sees it to him to shine from his eyes. "Hail, full of grace."
The best discussion of Madonna, is also the oldest, did S. Luke and we listened a few moments ago. It is not so much the story of the Madonna with the angel, as the narration of his whole life lived with the Son and the Son, of which discovered little by little the mission and the place that you would occupy close to Him
Maria was one of many young girls of Nazareth; confused with the peers in the synagogue for prayer, the fountain for water, "led a common life at all - it is said in a document of the Council - full of family concerns and work." No one suspected that
minimally from those who saw "clothed with the sun, crowned with stars and the moon under her feet." Only two elderly
noticed that her son was a poor voluntary and that the white doves of tenders for the presentation in the temple shining "the light of him, sent a revelation to the Gentiles."
"If she could take you - says S. Efrem turning to God - because you, the holy mountain, you've lightened your burden. "
Maybe someone jumped in front of her beauty, but he did not understand that it was the reflection of the fullness of grace which filled her soul. Being full of grace, Mary was beautiful. No one knew it was beautiful because it was loved. Love cancels the space between man and God
In her beauty was not, as often happens in the world, nor a liar nor mortified.
liar, and when only external beauty, when no correspondences in the rectitude of conscience and the heart mortified when it is only within, veiled from view by the look of a beauty. Maria was the truth in the new world, where all the good people will also be beautiful and all the beautiful people will be enriched by real justice and a genuine love. Tota pulchra, limbs and souls.
This makes it the splendor of our future photography.
The album of photographs that we keep at home, however beautiful and dear, is necessarily incomplete: we remember what we were, we do not anticipate that we will be. What we know imitating her, why not live model is a person who poses for a successful painter, but a mother who helps us to reproduce the features of the model par excellence, Jesus Christ, to become "conformed to his image. "
But this one condition, that we do what we said the servants of the feast of Cana, "Do whatever he tells you." You do now, what you say then: that is, be so available to put into motion before knowing what it tells you to do.
The Gospel that we read has a happy ending because he says that "the angel departed from her," that from that day Maria had to do without angels to answer because of the big life. But this did not withdrew its availability or refused her service.
Why the Feast of the time is still felt by popular piety and attracts those who do not know exactly the content? Perhaps because there is man still yearning for an innocence that is only in her spotless soul and thinks that is a bit 'including our own, or would be good if it were, perhaps because, at least today, in the candor of this day that illuminates the year that dies, we have the satisfaction of crushing the serpent's head with you, from which tomorrow will probably continue to be fooled;
perhaps because we remember that for us there was a grace does not happen to the origins and unappreciated; perhaps because, in the face of violence faced by the woman and that they disfigure their dignity, her memory urges us to see these creatures in the descendants of those who left a fragrance of grace in the Gospel of Jesus and that they knew more than any other, feeling their understanding, gratitude, forgiveness.
Today, thanks to the Immaculate, we seem to end up in the garden blithely desecrated, we have rebuilt in its prosperity (there's plenty), but we did not put in grace, and God continues unsuccessfully to look for: where are you ?
Nevertheless there are those who feel the instances of a new world, the lights for better times. The prophets of today claim to be so many signs, not least a renewed presence of the Virgin Mary in our midst. Not for nothing that many centuries ago St. Ephraim wrote: "When God saw that the men went from Him, he sent his Son to earth, and when you realize that you depart also from the Son, will send his mother on earth. "
Today is not just the feast of Christ, anticipates that the redemption of man in Mary, not only the feast of the Church that Mary began, shining and spotless; party today is also the man who sees in her " the honor of our people. "
the story does not change God with miracles, but with his children, first of all Mary, to whom he gave the task to also change our history full of grace: it is a mother and her mother can not say no.
