Daily Gospel Reflection
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September 8, 2022
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.
When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,
but before they lived together,
she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man,
yet unwilling to expose her to shame,
decided to divorce her quietly.
Such was his intention when, behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
“Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the Holy Spirit
that this child has been conceived in her.
She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,
because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill
what the Lord had said through the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means “God is with us.”
I’m a huge Marvel fan. My whole family is. For the past two decades, going to the theater to see the latest release has been a regular family pastime, but my love for Marvel’s stories stretches back to middle school when I started collecting comic books.
For my birthday, I’d receive rare, old titles as gifts. Each month I waited for the new editions to arrive in my mailbox. I even had a comic book shop on the other side of town that I frequented.
I loved the stories of my favorite heroes saving the universe and fighting injustice against outlandish supervillains.
A typical storyline was the hero’s origin story. The stories were always exciting and dramatic: spider bites, gamma rays, advanced technologies, or extraterrestrial encounters. It was often an accident or random twist of fate that sent the would-be superhero into isolation to learn how to use their powers, only to emerge as a new creation—usually with a silly name and costume.
Jesus’s origin story is none of those things. I am struck by how ordinary, how human, his story is. It is marked by Mary’s courage. And by Joseph’s integrity. Sure, there are elements of God’s supernatural intervention, but the most remarkable thing about the origin story of the world’s Savior is how intimately human it is. He truly is Emmanuel—God with us.
And we know how the next edition of the story goes from here: no room at the inn, born in the manger. U2 frontman Bono once said about our Savior’s origin story, “The idea that God… would seek to explain itself by becoming a child born in…poverty, in [manure] and straw…a child…I just thought, ‘Wow!’ Just the poetry…Unknowable love, unknowable power describes itself as the most vulnerable.”
Wow indeed. And toss in a comic book, “Ka-Pow!”
Prayer
Loving Father, you entrusted to Saint Joseph your only Son and his mother, our mother, Mary. Joseph protected them from harm and taught Jesus how to work for a living so that he could provide for his mother. Grant that we too may know his protection and be strengthened by his courage and perseverance, so that we might embrace the daily tasks in front of us more fully. We ask this through your Son, our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Today, we remember the birth date of the one honored as the “God-bearer.”
Mary’s birth was the first realization of the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ. She was born without sin, pure and holy—“full of grace”—to prepare her to bear God’s Son to the world.
Among the saints, only Mary and St. John the Baptist have commemorations on the dates of their births and their deaths (or assumption to heaven, in Mary’s case). These two, above all other saints, heralded and participated in the arrival of our savior.
The birthplace of Mary is not known for certain. One ancient tradition holds that she was born in Nazareth. Another tradition states that she was born in Jerusalem in a neighborhood near the pool of Bethesda. Today there is a church in that neighborhood dedicated to St. Anne, Mary’s mother, and a crypt under that church designates a spot where Mary is believed to have been born. View images from that church in this part of our virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
In the account of the first sin in Genesis, Eve was led astray by the figure of the serpent. Immediately upon discovering their sin, God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel” (Gen 3:15).
Because the offspring of the woman lethally strikes at the serpent’s head, this passage is allegorically understood as the final triumph of good over evil. Here is the first promise of a redeemer for fallen humanity, Jesus, and the passage notes he is born of woman, Mary. With her obedience, Mary reverses Eve’s disobedience and brings life to the world through her Son, Jesus.
When Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., arrived at a missionary outpost on the American frontier in northern Indiana in November of 1842, he saw a frozen lake covered in snow. The purity of the scene reminded him of Mary, and he named the university he founded after Our Lady of the Lake: the University of Notre Dame du Lac.
Images of Mary abound on campus, including a depiction of her birth in the mural shown above from the Basilica. Of course, she also appears atop the golden-domed Main Building, where she stands 19 feet high and weighs 4,000 pounds. Relics of Mary, including pieces of her clothes and hair, rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica.
Mary, Our Lady of the Lake, your obedience reversed Eve’s disobedience and brought life to the world—pray for us!