The Unexpected Jolt
Julián Carrón - As we approach Christmas, the liturgy puts facts before our eyes. Facts that, on the surface, seem small, seem to have insufficient force to change things in the world.
Facts so small that they hardly even deserve to be considered. It is a challenge to us, thrown at our way of thinking, to understand what God accomplishes by doing these things. The main characters are two women and the children they carry. One of them, Elizabeth, was barren; the other, Mary, was a virgin.
“Mary got up [we heard] and set out at once for a city of Judah.” What made her suddenly set out? It was learning from the Angel at the Annunciation that Elizabeth, despite her advanced age and barrenness, was expecting a child and was already six months pregnant (Lk. 1:36). God's promise to Zechariah, her husband, was fulfilled.
The child Elizabeth carries in her womb is tangible proof of this, a striking proof, not only for an infertile woman, but for anyone: no infertility can resist the power of God. Man's barrenness and incapacity are not an obstacle to His work; on the contrary, they are an opportunity to show that nothing is impossible for Him.
If God chooses a barren person whom everyone would have discarded, to make them flourish, then He can also choose our barrenness or inability to make them shine. However, we often remain skeptical of such a possibility, or promise. God responds to our skepticism with facts, not thoughts or arguments.
Thoughts and considerations are too weak to defeat human skepticism about God's ability to affect history. Even Zechariah, who had doubted, must surrender in the face of the power of facts. All that follows is confirmation of this. “As she entered Zechariah's house, she greeted Elizabeth.
As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child gasped in her womb.” What makes John gasp in his mother's womb? The newness brought by Mary is clearly manifested in the jolting of the child in Elizabeth's womb. How astonished she must have been to perceive it! Who knows what gasps of joy she will have caused, before which no uncertainty or distrust could have any place!
The gasp cannot be predicted or controlled. As it happened to Elizabeth, we too cannot be masters of the jolt that assails us and finds us disarmed, so unexpected is it. We do not have time to control it. We can then recognize it or not, but we cannot prevent it from happening! It is like the grace that pervades us: it always penetrates through a crack, like light, or without a crack, like an infiltration into a house.
But by the time we realize it, we have already been invaded like light or water that nothing can stop. We can recognize it and a moment later reject it, as the Gospel so many times documents, but this rejection is already evidence, proven, of that encroachment upon us. For the facts are merciless and have their own irreducibility.
They do not discount anyone. First, we are invaded, and then we realize that we are invaded. Only then do we feel the need to decide. Freedom remains intact. Not even a striking fact can predetermine our choice. We can accept it and embrace it, or reject it. This tells us about the nature of the event that is Christianity.
The fact and event of Christ leaves everything open. We are challenged to respond and can thus test our capacity for openness in the face of that unexpected happening. Elizabeth recognizes the jolt and allows herself to be opened wide to its origin. What does Mary carry in her womb to cause that gasp?
What is the origin? Elizabeth is the first to realize—precisely because of John's gasp—what Mary carries in her womb. It was still hidden from everyone's eyes what Mary was carrying in her womb: Jesus. But the first to realize the hint of newness that Jesus carries is John and, through John's gasp, Elizabeth as well. This is why Elizabeth stands amazed at these facts and exclaims, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
To what do I owe this, that the Lord should come to me?” Through these facts, God shows that he enters history, as we heard in the Letter to the Hebrews, through the body of a man: “you have prepared me a body.” How upsetting to think that God decided to change the world through the flesh of a man, through the splendor of that flesh!
We know well how complex the world is, and we can understand that this method of God upsets us, so much so that it is “a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles” and many times to us as well. But He does not wait for us to understand.
He acts before our eyes and then gives us plenty of time to understand. “Blessed is she who believed in the fulfillment of what the Lord said to her.” We ask that in the face of God's new action in our midst this coming Christmas, we have the same readiness as Mary to welcome all the newness that Jesus brings to the world.
Unrevised notes and translation by the author.
