The Lord Is My Chef Simbang Gabi Recipe, 21 December 2019
Zephaniah 3:14-18 ><)))*> ><)))*> ><)))*> Luke 1:39-45
For most Filipinos, being “blessed” (mapalad) and “lucky” (suwerte) are often used interchangeably because they both mean the same which is being fortunate. And most of the time, we mean blessedness as being endowed with wealth and material things.
Anyone with a stable job or a flourishing career or a growing business with at least a car and a house and lot is always considered as blessed. If you go big time or have made it to the top, then you are most blessed!
Parents who have put all their children through college, especially in expensive and exclusive Catholic schools and universities are also considered blessed in our culture that puts a high premium on education.
For most of us Filipinos, being blessed means to be financially stable and secured with some degrees of fame and accomplishments.
But our gospel today says nothing about these things as being blessed. Fact is, nowhere do we find in the Bible, especially in the gospel accounts where Jesus tells us that financial viability is a blessing. On the contrary, his teachings teem with a lot of moral aspersions against reliance and worship of money and material wealth.
True blessedness is having faith in God, believing that his words would be fulfilled!
Mary set out in those days and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
Luke 1:39-43, 45
Conversations between women
The Bible rarely records conversations exclusively between women. And even less frequent in the Bible is a conversation between two pregnant women that makes St. Luke’s account of the Visitation unique in itself.
For St. Luke, this encounter and exchange is significant because here are two women who bore a child in the most miraculous manner. Observe that St. Luke never used the word “pregnant” to describe the two women but simply told us that it is obviously the situation of both Elizabeth and Mary.
Exegetes explain St. Luke may have never used the term “pregnant” to emphasize to his readers God’s powerful grace on the two women in bearing a child: Elizabeth in her old age and barrenness and Mary in her youth and virginity.
What is most remarkable here is the way the two women were so “absorbed” in their conversation that one can imagine the “holy ground” they were standing so filled with Divine presence with the Holy Spirit hovering above them as two great souls met to honor God!
Even now if you go on a pilgrimage to the Church of the Visitation in Ein Karem, you can still experience that serenity and joy both women must have experienced on that hallowed ground.
True Blessedness
St. Luke tells us a lot of stories about “blessings” in his gospel account like here at the Visitation.
The most significant of these story of blessings is found in Luke 11:27-28 when Jesus was preaching, “a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.’ He replied, ‘Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.'”
And that “blessed one who hears the word of God and observes it” is none other than his own Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the first and par excellence “Doer-of-the-Word” for St. Luke!
Here at the Visitation, Elizabeth became the first human person, a woman, to call Mary “blessed” – the first of many disciples from future generations who will address the Blessed Mother in this manner as proclaimed by Mary herself in her Magnificat, “from now on will all ages call me blessed” (Lk.1:48).
Mary blessedness is primarily due to her faith and trust in God’s word spoken to her by the angel Gabriel. Unlike Zechariah, Mary right away submitted herself to the will of God by asking “how can this be”, indicating her deep faith.
Mary’s faith makes her a model disciple whom we must all imitate in following and believing Jesus Christ our Savior.
Likewise, Elizabeth can also be considered as a model disciple to us all because she believed and recognized the coming of the Christ by calling Mary “the mother of my Lord” (Lk.1:43). And again, holds the distinction as the first person and woman in St. Luke’s gospel to call Jesus “Lord”.
Here we find again the story of the Visitation that true blessedness and holiness is to be filled with God like St. Joseph the other day.
In praise of the women of the world, man’s part-ner
Another beautiful trait of St. Luke’s gospel account is it emphasis on the important roles of women not only in the spread of the Gospel but most especially in the world. He is the first champion of women’s rights, next only to Jesus Christ.
In narrating to us this brief story of the Visitation, we rediscover the beauty and blessedness of womanhood – and that is the celebration of Messianic age. Mary and Elizabeth are great women because of their faith, we now celebrate Advent and Christmas.
They both brought Jesus Christ into the world, something that women always do until now, especially mothers who faithfully teach and form their children to become good and faithful Christians.
Both women are a testament to Isaiah’s portrayal of God as a woman who is like faithful mother:
“Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”
Isaiah 49:15
Christmas is a beautiful reminder to us all of the very noble and important role of women in the world that unfortunately many of us, especially men, have continually refused to accept or ignored since the Fall of Adam and Eve.
In Genesis, we find God declaring “let us make man a suitable partner.”
And he created the woman, a part-ner of man, taken from one of his ribs because she is equal in dignity with him, created in the image and likeness of God. In fact, she is the most beautiful of his creation, being the last and most perfect!
During his recent concert in the country, U2’s Bono praised the women and human rights activists in the country, dedicating to them their song “Beautiful Day”.
“Human rights drown out human wrongs, that’s a beautiful day. When sisters around the world go to school with their brothers, that’s a beautiful day. When journalists don’t have to worry about what they write, that’s a beautiful day. When women of the world unite to rewrite history as herstory, that is a beautiful day.”
Bono from news reports
Because of Mary and Elizabeth, we now have that beautiful day of the year, Christmas that led to the most beautiful day of all, Easter.
In a fitting rejoinder to our gospel today, another woman the other day gave us a beautiful day to celebrate justice and democracy in the country when Quezon City RTC Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes convicted Datu Andal Ampatuan Jr. and other members of his influential clan for the murder of 57 people in the Maguindanao massacre that happened ten years ago.
Throughout history, we have seen that it has always been the women who make it happen for us all to have a beautiful day because they are the ones who bring life, who nurture life, who deepen life.
Let us make each day more beautiful by loving and caring always especially for those special women in our lives who have shown us the beauty and meaning of life, beginning with our own mother. Amen.
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