Our redemption is drawing near! The Fourth Sunday of Advent places before us Mary awaiting the birth of the Christ Child. The expectation of our Redeemer’s mother and the Christmas expectation of God’s people belong together.
The early Church Father St Irenaeus reflects in his treatise Against Heresies: “The Lord, coming visibly into his own creation, was cared for by his own creatures, whom he himself sustains in being. His obedience on the tree of the cross reversed the disobedience at the tree in Eden; and the good news of truth announced by the angel to Mary, a virgin betrothed to a man, annulled the evil falsehood that had deceived Eve, likewise a virgin betrothed to a man.
As Eve was led astray by the word of an angel and fled from her Creator after disregarding the word of God, so Mary in turn received good news through the word of an angel and bore God in obedience to his word. Just as Eve was led into disobedience towards God, Mary was persuaded to obey, and thus the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve.
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St Paul writes: ‘When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.’ The enemy would not have been justly defeated had the victor not been born of a woman, for it was through a woman that he had first gained power over humanity and set himself against the human race.
Therefore the Lord proclaims himself the Son of Man—the one who renews in himself that first man from whom the race of those born of women began; for just as through the defeat of one man our race fell into the bondage of death, so through the victory of one man we had to be raised back to life.”
See you at church today at 10:00!
