Daily Gospel Reflection
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December 18, 2019
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”
When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
It is Posada season in the borderlands, across Latin America, and in many U.S. Catholic communities. A posada is the reenactment of the journey undertaken by Mary and Joseph as they searched for shelter before the birth of the Christ child. Posadas take place in churches and family homes during the nine days leading up to Christmas. They traditionally include call and response songs as the couple portraying the Holy Family ask for shelter. They are denied several times and a celebration follows when they are finally received.
A little over a month ago, I accompanied a group of people from various faith traditions and nationalities during a visit to the southern border so they could bear witness to the impacts of current U.S. immigration policies. The capstone experience was a multi-faith service at the border wall between El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.
Different people read passages from sacred texts, made professions of faith, and movingly sang the lyrics to traditional posada songs. The striking difference was that the song was one-sided. When the traditional request for shelter was sung, there was no answer. Only silence. It was lost on no one how similar the journey of faith undertaken by Mary and Joseph is to thousands of migrants on the move across the globe today, especially at the US/Mexico border.
As we prepare our hearts and homes of Christmas in this Advent season, may we have the grace to recognize Jesus in our midst. He may even appear in the form of our migrant brothers and sisters.
Prayer
As we draw closer and closer to the celebration of the birth of Mary’s child, we listen to the Gospel narration of the divine announcement of Mary’s pregnancy and naming of her first-born Son, Jesus, yet to be born. Hearing this angelic message, we are reminded that each baptized Christian, each member of Christ’s Church, is a brother or sister of Jesus. We pray that we may be worthy of such a holy relationship. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Sts. Paul Mi and Peter Truat were among the hundreds of thousands of martyrs who were persecuted for their faith in Vietnam.
Peter was a catechist, and Paul was a convert who joined a missionary group to help spread the faith in Vietnam—they were both killed by strangulation. The painting shown here depicts these two saints being martyred with St. Peter Duong (whose feast day is December 10).
Another Vietnamese martyr honored tomorrow—St. Augustine Moi—was a manual laborer who was arrested during a persecution and commanded to trample a crucifix. He refused and was killed.
Between 150,000 and 300,000 Christians were killed for their faith in Vietnam in several waves of persecutions. Some were missionaries who were killed in the 17th century, others were killed in the last 200 years because of political movements that were at odds with the faith. These martyrs are all honored together on Nov. 24, and a number of them have their own feast days throughout the calendar.
Sts. Paul Mi and Peter Truat, you were killed for your faithfulness with thousands of other Vietnamese people, pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image for today is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Last accessed November 21, 2024 on Wikimedia Commons.
