Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: 2 Samuel 7, 1-5.8b-12.14a.16

Psalm: 88 (89), 2-3, 4-5, 27.29

2rd reading: Romans 16, 25-27

Gospel: Luke 1,26:38-XNUMX

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“Revelation of a mystery always kept in silence”…

When we contemplate the man Jesus, in whom we recognize the Word of God who became man, who became flesh, many questions can arise in our mind. Does this mean there is something new in God? Is there a change taking place in God? After the Ascension, does anything new dwell in God? But how can we understand that from all eternity, Christ exists? How to understand that Paul calls him “the first born of every creature” (1 Col 1,15:XNUMX)? Our mind falters somewhat in the face of this great difficulty, not to say impossibility, in thinking about the connection between the eternity of God and the time of man. God is immutable, he is from all eternity what he is. If God lacked something, he would not be the absolute being. And yet, God, in his eternity, “knits” with the time in which we are, and this is very difficult for us to conceive. But mystery hidden forever in silence, God manifests it. And God first manifests it, the Apostle tells us, through the prophetic writings.

Revelation, as we receive it, really begins with Abraham in human history. And this too is very mysterious... When we hear in the first reading “The Word of the Lord came to Nathan.” : How does this happen? What is going on in Nathan's life that makes him say: God spoke to me and asked me to tell you this. ? I don't know. I simply receive this Revelation from the people of Israel, who transmit the Holy Scriptures to me. And what our intelligence is capable of apprehending is the coherence in Holy History of the deployment of God's work. We clearly see that there is a continuity in the prophetic revelation, a progression which will culminate in the Word made flesh, the Word of God made man, Jesus, in whom God speaks entirely. Gradually, God reveals himself. Gradually, God explains, expresses what he is doing, what he wants to do, what he is going to do. And to David he reveals this important thing: “It’s not you who’s going to build me a house, it’s me

who will build you a house.” And God plays on the very meaning of the word house (which also works in Hebrew): the maison designates both the building but also the family. “It is I who will build you a house”, that is to say, descendants. In fact, David wants to install the solid, definitive temple to the left of the royal palace. At the time, we did not look at the maps towards the North, we looked at them towards the East: they were oriented. And when we look towards the East, if we place the temple on Mount Moriah, the hill of Zion is on its right, where the royal palace is built. By installing the temple there, David found himself at the right hand of the Temple, and he thus strengthened his royal power. And in a certain way, he wants to use God to establish his royal power. But the Lord said to him, “You are not going to build me a house. I’m the one who’s going to build you a house.” And he announces to him this descent: “I will raise up for you a successor from your descendants, who will be born of you, and I will make his kingdom stable. I will be a father to him; and he shall be a son unto me.”

And for a thousand years the people of Israel heard this prophecy, reread this prophecy, listened to this prophecy, seeing clearly that none of David's successors could be the fulfillment of what God had promised. Mary has in her heart the words of the prophets. Mary, daughter of Israel, meditates on the Holy Scriptures, she knows them. She who so loves to meditate in her heart everything she experiences, everything she sees, of course she meditates the Torah in her heart, but also the writings of the prophets. Of course Mary awaits with many other sons and daughters of Israel the fulfillment of the promises. What the angel is going to say to him is strictly incomprehensible if we do not have in mind a certain number of prophetic promises. Already the name “Jesus”: it is the same that we translate in other books by the name “Joshua”, Yeshua. Joshua was the one who brought the people into the Promised Land, the one who brought to fulfillment what had been announced to Moses in Egypt. Jesus is the one who will bring us into the true Promised Land that is the Kingdom. And then when Marie hears him call Son of the Most High, that he goes receive the throne of David his Father, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever…she must have these prophetic announcements in her heart to understand what it means. This, brothers and sisters, is why it is so important to read and reread and meditate on the Holy Scriptures. We cannot understand Jesus, nor what God is doing today, nor our own lives, if we do not meditate on the Holy Scriptures. This is one of the very impressive things in the life of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus: the way in which she draws on the Scriptures, even though she does not have a Bible: she has a New Testament, but the She has the Old Testament in bits and pieces in notebooks. It seems to me that in all his writings, which are not very numerous, there are 1800 quotations from the Scriptures. The Word of God comes out through the pores of his skin. She speaks the Word of God. When she expresses herself, very often she does not open quotation marks to quote a verse, she inserts it into her words, it becomes her own words, it is the material of her words, the material of her thoughts. And for this, we must take time to read and meditate on the Holy Scriptures.

When you have, for ten years, read the entire Bible each year, I assure you that at the end of ten years, many things will have been deposited in your memory. You just need to devote about twenty minutes a day to it... It works! Is this an impossible challenge? And even if it takes two years to read the entire Bible, in ten years you will have read it five times!

With a pencil in hand to underline things, read notes. And after a while, when we read, we say to ourselves: “Hey, but that reminds me of this other passage,” and we go and look at it and we discover how there is a symphony in Scripture and how the Word of God resonates. We really need to nourish ourselves with the Word of God, and this word reveals to us what God wants to do.

Finally, when Mary receives this Revelation - and again, despite all the representations of paintings, icons, sculptures which represent this magnificent scene of the Annunciation, we do not know what happened... When the Scripture tells us that "the angel Gabriel entered her house", how is it going ? I don't know. Great mystery... But what is certain is that what Mary experiences is the revelation of what God wants to do and what God is going to do. You will notice that no questions are asked of our Lady: God does not ask her opinion, he reveals to her what he is going to do. And Mary consents to what God wants to do. This is true freedom: it is to consent to what God wants. In Heaven, we will only do what we want, because we will want everything that God wants, because finally we will be fully free.

And so today to learn to become free, to learn to live our life fully as a man, it is by seeking the will of God for us, by seeking to understand what God really wants and by adhering to it with all our soul, that we will be able to grow in freedom and that we will be able not only to advance towards the Kingdom, but to fulfill our life as a man.

And, I repeat, the accomplishment of a man’s life is holiness.

This is always what we must aim for: to become saints... and not half, but fully, so that our unique life is truly beautiful and successful.

Amen