(Fourth Sunday of Advent (C): This homily was given on December 19, 2021 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Micah 5:1-4; Psalm 80:2-19; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Advent 2021]
God’s plan; our plans.
In case you haven’t noticed, the two don’t always align themselves perfectly. It would be nice if they did, but they don’t! Sometimes, happily, our plans do coincide with the Lord’s plan. For example: we pray for something good (a healing, a friend’s conversion, a new job)—and we get it. Our will coincides with God’s will, and we live happily ever after.
Or at least until we pray for another special intention!
But very often, as we all know, our plans DON’T fit into the Lord’s plan: we don’t get what we want; the smooth road of life suddenly becomes a street filled with potholes and detours—even worse than School Street here in Westerly (if you can imagine a road worse than that one!) And it’s here that we face one of life’s most important questions: What should I do? When my plans don’t match up with the Lord’s plan, what should I do?
Some people, unfortunately, answer that question by completely ignoring God’s plan and stubbornly pursuing their own agenda—even if it involves hurting other people and breaking every one of the Ten Commandments. For example, Joe decides that he wants a new car, but he can’t afford it. So, he goes to the local dealership and steals one. Jill wants a promotion at her place of employment, but Judy already has the job. So, Jill tells lies to the boss about Judy and gets her fired.
Here, my brothers and sisters, we come to an important principle of good morality: We may never do evil that good may come of it. St. Paul tells us that in Romans 3:8. Or, to put it in more familiar terms, the end never justifies the means. Yes, it’s good that Joe wants a new car, but he shouldn’t steal to get it. Yes, it’s good that Jill wants a promotion at her place of employment, but she shouldn’t lie about Judy in order to get it. Yet these are precisely the kinds of things people will do when they focus only on their plans and forget about God’s plan. Because when they stop considering God’s plan, they end up forgetting about God’s law.
And by the way—this temptation to do evil that good may come of it—this is the great temptation of our technological age. For example, some men and women nowadays tell us that they want to prevent overpopulation. But in order to accomplish their goal they push evils like contraception and abortion on the poor countries of the world. Others want to stop the suffering of the elderly and the terminally ill, but in the process they promote evils like euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Certain married couples want to conceive a child, but to achieve that end they move beyond moral means to gravely immoral means (such as artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization).
I focus on this issue this morning because in today’s gospel we encounter two women who responded very differently when their plans did not match up with God’s plan. The two women, of course, are Elizabeth and our Blessed Mother.
First, Mary.
Before the angel Gabriel appeared to her, Mary certainly did not plan to conceive a child by the power of the Holy Spirit; she didn’t plan to give birth to the Savior of the world; she didn’t plan to have the awesome responsibility for raising the Son of God put on her young shoulders. In today’s gospel we heard about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth after Gabriel had appeared to her at the Annunciation. Scripture says that Mary proceeded in haste into the hill country to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s home. She proceeded in haste because she knew her elderly cousin needed her. Remember that Gabriel had told Mary that Elizabeth was also pregnant with a son. Mary believed it was God’s plan that she should go and help her cousin, and so she did. She forgot about herself and her own needs; she forgot about her plans; she apparently even forgot about the difficulty of the journey.
I remember when I was in Israel in the late 1990s—getting around the “hill country” wasn’t easy, and we were in a bus! Our Blessed Mother certainly didn’t travel to see Elizabeth in an air-conditioned bus!
And consider Elizabeth herself. As a young woman, she certainly didn’t plan to get pregnant at an old age. In fact, her husband Zechariah lost his voice because he didn’t believe it was even possible! And yet, that was part of God’s plan for her. Elizabeth, thankfully, accepted that plan (as Mary did) and she nurtured the life within her for nine months, eventually giving birth to John the Baptist, the Lord’s prophet. Imagine, by the way, if two women in similar situations became pregnant today: one of them young, unmarried and poor (like Mary); the other old and ill-equipped physically to keep up with a little child (like Elizabeth). Can you imagine what the people at Planned Parenthood would say to those two women?
Think about that.
When God’s plan conflicts with our plans we can either ignore his will and pursue our own desires (which is currently the common approach to the problem), or we can do what Mary and Elizabeth did: we can let go of our plans and submit totally and completely to the Lord’s. Amy Grant sings a beautiful song about the Blessed Mother entitled, “Breath of Heaven.” Some of you have probably heard it. I know many of our young people have. In it, she has Mary say these words, in prayer, to God the Father: “But I offer all I am, for the mercy of your plan.”
Mary did that, and great things happened—things beyond her wildest dreams. May all of us learn to submit to God’s plan as she did—and as Elizabeth did—so that the Lord can also do great things for us.
