A sermon on Luke 1:39-45
By Fr. Mike Paraniuk
St. Mary Catholic Church
St. Benignus Catholic Church
St. Mary Queen of Heaven
and Holy Trinity Catholic Church
With the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, we see the two greatest women in God's plan to save His humans. They are great because God chose them to give birth to the two greatest men who would do God's will to save us: Jesus and John the Baptist.
But there is something else Mary and Elizabeth shared in common that you never hear talked about: shame. The townsfolk would have viewed both these women with shame. They believed them to be unworthy of respect or honor. Why?
Others saw Elizabeth with shame because she did not give birth to a child for decades. Elizabeth endured a lifetime of being treated like a failure. The worth of a woman was based solely on her ability to be a mother. Society considered a childless woman as cursed by God. Mary fared even worse. The virgin conception of Jesus put Mary in grave danger.
Here was the punishment for a woman who conceived with child by a man not intended to be her husband.
“They shall bring the girl to the entrance of her father’s house and there her townsmen shall stone her to death” (Deut. 22:20.) Wow. Tell us how you really feel about that woman. And Jesus Himself would have been aborted. Thank God Joseph believed the angel. And thank God for choosing these two courageous women who did God's will despite the judgment of shame heaped upon them.
Through Elizabeth honoring Mary, we see God taking away the shame. Elizabeth said Mary is "blessed."
The Greek word makaria spoken by Elizabeth is the same word used by Jesus in the Beatitudes. It translates in English as "Happy." Happy is Mary who believed. Happy is Mary who said "Yes" to God. Happy is Mary because God removed her shame.
The son she bore, Jesus, came into our world to remove our shame heaped upon us by Satan. God clearly said in Zephaniah 3:19: "I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will turn their shame into praise and renown in all the earth." God says through St. Paul, “Everyone who believes in him (Jesus) will not be put to shame.” (Romans 10:11.) God replaces our shame from Satan with His Love from Jesus.
I remember one night in the early 1990s when I was on duty at the Care Unit Hospital. A father brought in his teenage son who was addicted to this new drug called "crystal meth." (It had just come to Cincinnati.)
After a two-day search, the dad found him passed out, lying under an overpass in the city.
He described what happened: "I picked him up and held him liked I used to do when he was a baby. He looked at me dazed and said with a slur, 'Dad, why are you here? I'm not worth it.'
"I replied, 'You are to me.'
"But Dad, I stink!'
"I said, 'I don't care.'
"My son then said, 'Dad, leave me alone. Please stop loving me!'
"I replied, 'I can't.'"
Dad paid for his son's treatment in full.
God gave us Jesus when we stunk from sin. He washed us clean by His Blood. He paid our debt to God in full. God could do this because an unmarried pregnant woman said, "Yes."
Happy Advent.