How do you express your joy? Do you clap your hands, laugh loudly scream out, or react with a gesture? In our Gospel today, the infant John “leaped for joy.” John, in his mother’s womb, expressed an emotional and physical reaction.
Elizabeth experienced a jump in her womb and Luke relates it to John’s recognition of Jesus. This beautifully captures the emotion and feeling of that meeting between the two pregnant women.
So this begs the question: when we come into the Lord’s presence, are moved like John the Baptist to leap with joy? What’s keeping us from leaping with joy? Is it something that’s bigger than the Lord himself, the One who is to come? It may look that way, but nothing is greater than God! And that in and of itself is reason to leap for joy! So then why are we so glum? It is finances, illness, stress, failures, disappointments, job loss, senseless violence, the fiscal cliff?
Maybe the reason for our lack of joy is because the thing that we’re lacking is God’s presence in our lives. We know where to find Him. We know where to meet Him. We know how to be in His presence. But do we go there? Are we the wise people who seek Him out? Or are we chasing after other things that seem to promise joy and fulfillment only to find out after that they leave us empty? And in the meantime, they have been distracting us from the one thing that we really need!
Jesus loves us and wants to be in an intimate, loving relationship with us. Are we ready for the relationship? Are we open to that relationship? Is there room for Him in our Inn? Do we think that’s too tall of an order? Here are the words that Elizabeth spoke to Mary, “Blessed are you, blessed is the fruit of your womb, blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” In other words, “Mary, you not only listened to what God told you, you’re actually going to spend your life doing it.”
For Luke, Mary is not important because Jesus is here son, but because she actually does what Jesus expects all of His followers to do: hear God’s word and carry it out. Mary is the perfect Christian not because of her special selection by God, but because she always acts on what she hears.
How well does that apply to us in the midst of this Advent season? Are we believing and trusting in what was spoken to us from the Lord? Are we able to hear His voice through all the noise around us?
During Advent, we have been preparing ourselves to bring light to those dark places within us. If we have waited, if we have prepared ourselves well, if we have let the light in, then something inside us will leap with joy this Christmas, and we can celebrate the coming of our Savior with the same innocence and joy that Luke describes in his gospel.
Christ is coming! We need to be like Elizabeth and Mary and say “yes” to His coming. There is still time. Let us ready ourselves to receive Him.
