The Immaculate Conception, most highly-favored lady.

oachim and Anne must have known. It is the kind of grace that will stand out, if your child nev­er sins. If your child nev­er once talks back to you, it is a good bet you will notice. If your child is nev­er dis­obe­di­ent, if your child nev­er has to be cor­rect­ed, if your child in short behaves in a way no child or per­son has ever behaved, you will be aware. How they must have mar­veled at their daugh­ter, and won­dered at the pur­pos­es of God. I do not know whether Mary’s par­ents may have sus­pect­ed that some­thing relat­ed to the promised Mes­si­ah was the cause of her immac­u­late con­cep­tion; I do not know whether they lived long enough to find out. There is a tra­di­tion that says they did, and that Jesus was with them when they died. I would like to think so. But either way, they cer­tain­ly knew what it meant to watch and wait upon the Lord, who has made all things, includ­ing our under­stand­ing, per­fect in its time.

THY SON SHALL BE IMMANUEL AS SEERS FORETOLD

The prophe­cy was more than 700 years old by that time. Joachim, Anne, and Mary knew it well: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots” (Isa. 11:1). For more than 700 years—longer than their cap­tiv­i­ty in Egypt—Israel wait­ed for the restora­tion of the king­dom. They were cap­tive to the Assyr­i­ans, the Baby­lo­ni­ans, the Per­sians, the Greeks, and final­ly the Romans. If any nation had known exile, it was Israel. If any nation under­stood what it meant to watch and wait upon the Lord, it was Israel.

But then, Israel is a fig­ure for all of us. We are made out­cast by the evil around us; we are made out­cast by our own par­tic­i­pa­tion in it. And so we wait for the promised restora­tion; and God, as it seemeth, delays and delays. Still He calls us to patience and faith. His promise has nev­er before been left unkept. God will bring us back; He will restore us.

And once in Israel (Luke 1:26–38), Gabriel came to Mary, white and holy and flam­ing, and told her that the son she would con­ceive would ful­fill the old promise and be Emmanuel. She was fright­ened and per­plexed. Even the sin­less Mary was aston­ished and out of sorts when con­front­ed by the holi­ness of an archangel. But Gabriel calms her and explains: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the pow­er of the High­est shall over­shad­ow thee: there­fore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

Mary responds with holy con­se­cra­tion and holy accep­tance: “Behold the hand­maid of the Lord; be it unto me accord­ing to thy word.” But she does not have com­plete under­stand­ing, and we are told that she “kept all these things, and pon­dered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). She was per­fect­ly sin­less, and she knew per­fect­ly how to watch and wait upon the Lord. She knew to let it be as God’s word had told her, to trea­sure it, to wait for it in her heart—a heart that rests in Him with per­fect trust, even when we lack sure knowl­edge of the ways of God.

But Mary did not need to under­stand every­thing. She watched and pon­dered as she car­ried God in her womb. She watched and pon­dered as she raised Him from a child to a man. (She was the only per­fect moth­er to bring up a per­fect son; Joseph must have felt like such a worth­less out­sider in that fam­i­ly!) She watched and pon­dered through his three-year-min­istry, through his arrest and ulti­mate­ly his cru­ci­fix­ion, and through Pen­te­cost. And still her under­stand­ing of the full­ness of truth, of all God is and all he plans, was imper­fect. She wait­ed on God to reveal to her her great role in sal­va­tion his­to­ry.

Most high­ly-favored lady!

TO ME BE AS IT PLEASETH GOD

We wait and we con­tin­ue, and still we do not under­stand. We do not have to. We are doing as we should. When John the Bap­tist came to pre­pare the way, the first instruc­tion he gave was: “Repent.” He did not say: “Take up arms against the Romans.” That is sig­nif­i­cant. Many in Israel believed, and knew, and thought they knew, that the Mes­si­ah would come as a con­quer­ing Jew­ish Cae­sar. They want­ed the restora­tion of their king­dom, but they for­got that the rea­son they lost their king­dom was not mere­ly because an evil nation had enslaved them. The Jews were them­selves the evil nation, and time and again they reject­ed the God who had freed them from slav­ery and built them into a king­dom. They were exiles not because their con­querors were wicked, but because they were wicked. And so the first call in restora­tion is always repen­tance.

How utter­ly fit­ting it was, and still unex­pect­ed, that the God who came to free us from sin would first make one woman sin­less, and come to us through her. In Mary, God achieves, in the sin­gle moment of her con­cep­tion, what He takes our whole lives to achieve in us. In Mary, we con­tem­plate the ful­ly human per­son God intends for us to become. (To err is not human, but inhu­man.) Mary was the first to pre­pare the way of the Lord. So we must repent, that we, like her, may pre­pare for God to reside with­in our­selves.

Christ came to free us from our sins, for it is only there­by that we may be restored to the king­dom we have lost. But the king­dom is not of this world. It is an error that human beings nev­er seem to stop mak­ing, how­ev­er often we are remind­ed: We want our nation back, by which we mean the Cae­sar we pre­fer. But Christ comes to give us the heav­en­ly Jerusalem. For we were made for the heav­en­ly Jerusalem. And if Advent can teach us any­thing, in addi­tion to patience and repen­tance, it is that we should stop think­ing in polit­i­cal or earth-bound cat­e­gories, and think instead in spir­i­tu­al and eter­nal ones.

Because he was not the Mes­si­ah they thought he ought to be (does that sound famil­iar?), Christ was reject­ed of his peo­ple. The king­dom was restored, but not in a way any­one could have expect­ed: Christ founds a Church upon the rock of Peter, and the Church is Israel—not in that God has reject­ed the Jew­ish peo­ple, but so that the “ful­ness of the Gen­tiles [will] come in” (Rom. 11:25); and then God will restore the Jew­ish peo­ple. The Church Mil­i­tant is not a world­ly king­dom, but a heav­en­ly king­dom of sin­ners in the process of being restored. They are in the world; they are not of the world.

God always ful­fills his promis­es, but at a time of His choos­ing and not in a way we expect. Would it not be bet­ter if God told us the answer to every ques­tion that would per­plex our minds, so that we would not spend so much of our ener­gies in imag­in­ing false­ly and blam­ing God for not achiev­ing our sal­va­tion in the way we dreamed He would? But no. It is a virtue to learn to wait on Him. It is a virtue to have faith. It means noth­ing to be cer­tain of all things. I sus­pect even in Heav­en there will be mys­ter­ies, and con­se­cra­tion to them, and a holy wait­ing upon rev­e­la­tion.

It is cer­tain that when Gabriel came to Mary, she had known none of God’s full plan, and very lit­tle of it would be revealed to her. But she asked Gabriel only one ques­tion: How could she pos­si­bly con­ceive a child? When Gabriel told her it would be by the Holy Spir­it that she would con­ceive, she said, “So be it,” and asked no more. Mary was not a the­olo­gian; she was con­tent to sim­ply say yes to God, and wait.

Mary teach­es us holy wait­ing. In her meet­ing with Gabriel, she teach­es us to be ser­vants and hand­maids of God’s ways (not our own), to pon­der, to wait, to watch, to pre­pare the way of the Lord, as once she pre­pared it—even in her very womb.

Most high­ly-favored lady!