The following are the final points made during the last session on the Advent recollection, Awaiting… the Child. These were shared on Friday, 21 December. They are now offered for your Christmas reflection.

For today in the city of David a Saviour has been born to you: he is Christ the Lord (Luke 2: 11).
The birth of Jesus manifests God’s plan of salvation of humankind within the realities of our finite space and time. We see this fulfilled in and through Mary's maternity—of first bearing Jesus within her and then bearing him forth into the world as God’s Good News.
On this most holy of nights, let us reflect on God’s gift of spiritual maternity to humankind for we too are invited to let God bring forth Jesus into our lives so we can share Jesus. Indeed, maternity is the basis of the friendship Jesus himself wants to have with us. For as he says to his disciples: “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Maternity, however, comes to be with labour pains—hopeful yearnings that they are—for a child that is unseen but is expectantly awaited for. Through maternity one grows up in faith and love to become mother. The moment of birth is when maternity is most fully realized: a child's birth is also the birth into motherhood for the one who bears. Christmas is therefore Mary’s anointed time to be Mother to Jesus, God-with-us. Don't our hopes for Jesus to be born into our lives at Christmas give expression to the spiritual maternity Jesus is inviting us to?
The groans of Creation for the glory of God’s revelation to our broken world are also maternal. At Jesus’ birth, the fulfillment of his mother’s long wait echoes Creation’s longer wait for the Saviour to come to re-create out of a lost, wasted and barren garden the new Eden that will be lush, bountiful and holy again. Truly, Mary’s assent brings Jesus into Creation to perfect it.
At the moment of the Saviour’s birth, then, all Creation finally finds its voice, silenced for so long by sin and strife. Now Creation can join the heavenly throng to joyously proclaim, “Glory to God in the highest and peace to all on earth.”
Today’s world also awaits our assent to “give birth” to Jesus in our lives. It waits because it looks to us to help renew the face of the earth in companionship with Jesus.
At this Christmas time, let us remember then that all of Creation can come alive again in friendship with the Emmanuel, God-with-us. And for this, Creation does indeed wait for us to say, “yes,” like Mary did, to God to bear Jesus into our lives for the good of the world.
View comments