Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa: Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception - 2nd Sunday of Advent, C

This Meditation is shared from the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Below you can find the Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception - 2nd Sunday of Advent, C, Sunday 8 December 2024.

Lk 1: 26-38

The evangelist Luke frames the Annunciation episode with a series of elements that provide valuable keys to illuminate the whole scene.

The first element we focus on is the reference to the pregnancy of cousin Elizabeth and all that was told immediately before the Annunciation to Mary.

Indeed, our text begins with a temporal clarification: we are in the sixth month (Lk 1:26), and it is precisely the sixth month since the conception of John the Baptist. The angel Gabriel's address to Mary then ends with an explicit reference to Elizabeth and her pregnancy (Lk 1:36-37). On the basis of these words, Mary agrees to the Lord's proposal so that the angel can depart from her (Lk 1:38).

The miraculous event of Elizabeth's pregnancy thus opens and closes the episode of the Annunciation and proves to be important for Mary's response.

And why? What does it mean?

What happened to Elizabeth reveals something fundamental about God and our relationship with him. It says that "nothing is impossible for God" (Luke 1:37).

People seeking salvation have often had the experience of being confronted with something impossible: it is impossible for God to save, it is impossible for God to open the sea, it is impossible for God to forgive, it is impossible for God to return. It is impossible for God to feed in the desert, it is impossible for God to continue to love us.

The history of the relationship between God and human beings consists of many impossibilities, a litany of hopeless situations that nevertheless became possible again at some point.

To the point where we discover each time that what makes man's path to God "impossible" is not so much his distance, but our fear, as we saw last Sunday: a fear that blocks life, the fear that it is no longer possible to accept the gift of God, that it is no longer possible to start something new.

This is the great fear that dwells within us, that our unfruitful life, just like Elizabeth's.

The angel Gabriel also says it very clearly: "They all said that Elizabeth was barren": man can only determine his own barrenness, but Elizabeth's pregnancy says something different, says that nothing is impossible for God.

This is the message that recurs from the beginning to the end of the text; this is the reason why Mary no longer needs to be afraid (Lk 1:30)…

This Meditation was originally published on the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Please click here to read the full text.