The Third Sunday in Advent
December 14, 2025
Good morning, Church. Today is Gaudete Sunday. We’re at the halfway point in the short season of Advent. Gaudete roughly translated from Latin means, “Rejoice, Our God is near.” We lit a pink candle today, and I’m wearing some pink. Liturgically, it’s a whimsical color, signifying that we can barely restrain our joy at the coming of the Christ child, the incarnation of the divine.
Whenever, I hear or read the Magnificat, I can barely restrain my own joy.
It is always a bit risky for a man to talk about what pregnant women might be going through, but I’m going to take that risk this morning, with your kind permission. Please indulge me as I explore with you the importance of the mother of Jesus, as we heard her voice, in today’s reading of the Magnificat.
The Magnificat is very similar to the Song of Thanksgiving that Hannah, the mother of Samuel proclaimed in the first testament of the Holy Bible. In the second chapter of the First Book of Samuel, after years of praying for a child, upon learning that she’s pregnant, she also shouts out her praise to our God. Hannah is the exemplar of faithful praying, and I understand her Song of Thanksgiving is often used when our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate Rosh Hashanah.
Hannah proclaims, “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God. …. There is no Holy One like our God, no one besides you. There is no rock like our God…. God raises up the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.”
Let me set the scene for the Magnificat. The angel has announced that Mary will give birth to the son of the Most High. Mary gives her consent with this response, “Here am I, the servant of God; let it be with me according to your word.” Then she sets out and went “with haste” – almost in a panic – to hide out in the home of her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist.
The Magnificat follows the greeting of Elizabeth. Upon seeing Mary, Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist, filled with the Holy Spirit “exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’ ”
It’s almost like Hannah and Mary, these two prophetic women, are talking to each other over centuries of history. Hannah in the 11th century before the common era and Mary, two thousand years ago.
And their subversive proclamations to us are very similar. Our God will lift up the poor and hungry and bring down the mighty from their seats of power.
I submit to you, that these two women announced a social revolution, giving voice to the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized. They’re telling us, that the kindom of the Holy One is coming soon. And that new kindom will turn the hierarchical stratified, social order upside down.
Here we have this little girl, Mary. She’s likely still a teenager, she’s quite vulnerable as most women were 2,000 years ago in Palestine. She and Joseph were getting ready to get married and build a life together. Women in the very stratified society of the ancient world who were unmarried in this time were particularly vulnerable and depended on men for their physical security. Mary having given her consent, her yes, to bear the Son of God, instantly put herself in danger. She surrenders all her security. She’s pregnant. She’s unmarried. She could be accused of adultery. According to the law at the time, she could be stoned to death. Joseph, her betrothed could dump her quietly, but he didn’t thanks to the intervention of a messenger from God. Are you still with me?
Imagine what Mary had to deal with: the gossip, the looks.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, women still are most vulnerable to be victims of domestic violence when they are pregnant. So, we need to get into this moment of vulnerability that Mary has entered. And yet, what does she say? Her response wasn’t passive; it was more than, “Yea. God I’m okay with it.”
“My soul magnifies my God who has done great things! Tell out my soul the goodness of our God!”
Mary says yes to the unknown. Many of us know the path that Mary has chosen. Shortly after the birth of Jesus, she has to flee to Egypt with Jesus and Joseph fearing that Jesus would be murdered. She soon learns about Herod’s order to slaughter all infants. In a few years after the Holy Family returns to Nazareth, she will raise a teen-age son. (Oh boy. Have any of you raised a teenager? One of the hardest things I’ve ever done, for sure.) When Jesus is just a teenager, she and Joseph can’t find him for a few days as he was hanging out with the guys in the temple. Did she panic at losing the son of the Most High? Did he run away? Imagine her anxiety. When Jesus becomes an adult, she will witness her son’s betrayal, torture, and the horror of his slow death by crucifixion. She will be utterly shocked when she learns of his resurrection, but then again, she loses him a third time at his ascension into heaven. All her friends and followers of Jesus, then tell her, “Oh don’t worry, he’s coming back anytime now.” But she never lives to see that. She likely became a refugee again, later fleeing her homeland and we think she eventually settled in Ephesus, present day Turkey, where she lived out the rest of her life. All in all, a rather stressful timeline for Mary. I suspect Mary had a tough gritty side to her personality, not just a shy timid and meek figure. While today, we meditate on her Magnificat, we know that Mary endured a lot of suffering in her lifetime, to which many of us can relate.
On December 21, 1997, founder of the Church of the Saviour, Gordon Cosby preached on the connection between the Annunciation and the Magnificat. It’s a brilliant sermon. I encourage you to go online and listen to it.
Like Mary, we live in anticipation of the promise. As Gordon preached decades ago, we live in that gap between the promise and the fulfillment of the promise. Mary submitted to the ultimate mystery. Have we likewise submitted to that ultimate divine mystery? Can we like Mary say to our God, as recorded in Luke’s Gospel: “Here am I, the servant of God; let it be with me according to your word.”
I believe Mary and Hannah were tough, radical women. Both consecrated their sons to holiness, to paths that would make them liberators of their people; to become champions for the poor, the left out, the marginalized, the hungry, the imprisoned and the stranger. I believe these two women had a huge influence on their children, teaching them about justice and caring for those that are forgotten, excluded and ostracized.
Later in the fourth chapter of Luke, after Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, he proclaimed release of the captives, sight to the blind and freedom for the oppressed. Where did he get these ideas? I think his mother, Mary taught him these values.
Do you notice this direct through-line from Hannah to Mary to Jesus? There’s a consistent hopeful message of freedom from each of them at different points in Biblical history. Are you still with me?
Many of us believe that Jesus is fully divine and fully human. Mary not only was the mother that gave Jesus human flesh, but she also taught Jesus what it meant to be human.
You may know, I was raised Roman Catholic in a very heavily Protestant neighborhood in southern Virginia. I asked my devout Irish Catholic mother, “Mom, there’s a church down the street from our house. Why do we have to drive across town to go to church?” We were what I call post Vatican II Catholics. There wasn’t a lot of emphasis on Mary, believe it or not. It wasn’t until I quit being a “practicing” Catholic, that I became attracted to the Blessed Mother of Jesus. I’ve returned to praying the rosary daily. Which by way basically recites repeatedly many passages from scripture so I don’t buy the remark that Catholics don’t read scripture, just saying.
What does all this mean for us today? The Magnificat calls us to be like Mary, God bearers to a broken world. What is the good news for us now?
God shows up for those on the margins. Look at the communities who have venerated Mary. The shrine to Our Lady of Czestochowa in Poland was a place of defiance against an authoritarian Communist dictatorship; the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico and Central America has been a beacon of hope to the mestizo community there; in Medjugorje under an authoritarian regime in the former Yugoslavia, and Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal when it was ruled by dictators. I don’t have time to list them all, but these communities experienced desperate poverty and oppression and turned to the Blessed Mother in times of strife. That same spirit that dwelled in Hannah and Mary magnified their faith in God it is because they believed in the promises of freedom that Hannah and Mary proclaimed.
In the early church, followers of Jesus referred to Mary as “theotokos” which means God-bearer. God called Mary to bear our savior, to give him flesh. I believe God likewise calls us to be God bearers, to be Mary to God’s creation, to be prophets of freedom.
Mary got the ball rolling. She said yes to the unknown, when she said yes to God’s call. Now it’s our turn. “Here am I, the servant of God; let it be with me according to your word.”
Hail Mary, full of grace, God is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.