The final two paragraphs of Pope Benedict’s encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe salvi, fittingly turn our attention to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Star of Hope.  He references an early hymn which greets Mary, the Mother of God as “Star of the Sea”: Ave maris stella. (SS 49) This is a beautiful title for Mary as we consider the topic of Christian hope.  The Holy Father writes:

Human life is a journey. Towards what destination? How do we find the way? Life is like a voyage on the sea of history, often dark and stormy, a voyage in which we watch for the stars that indicate the route. The true stars of our life are the people who have lived good lives. They are lights of hope. Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light, the sun that has risen above all the shadows of history. But to reach him we also need lights close by—people who shine with his light and so guide us along our way. Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for us? With her “yes” she opened the door of our world to God himself; she became the living Ark of the Covenant, in whom God took flesh, became one of us, and pitched his tent among us (cf. Jn 1:14). (ibid.)

As I read these words, I recall a particularly important point in my life in which Mary indeed served as a star of hope for me.  Perhaps I have shared previously that I was not always an intentional disciple of Christ.  Sometime during my college years, I had drifted from practicing my Catholic faith.  I was not angry with God, nor was I upset with the Church.  I just took my focus off of Him and followed my own pursuits.  As I was in the early years of my career, I began noticing a restlessness in my heart, a feeling of emptiness and hopelessness.  Something was missing in my life, which in reality, that something was actually a someone.  I recall vividly going to bed early on New Year’s Eve in 2004 with a heaviness of heart.  The next morning, the first of 2005, still feeling burdened, I looked next to my bed and saw a Rosary sitting there.  Prompted no doubt by the Holy Spirit and the intercession of Mary, I decided to reacquaint myself with how to pray the Rosary, and then I did.  Though there was nothing mystical or spectacular that happened, what had seemed so dark in my heart now seemed to not be so overwhelming.  It is as though there was a dim light the promised hope.  

I continued to pray the Rosary each day and that light of hope continued to grow and I began to be intentional about getting to know Jesus on a personal level.  As I look back on that time, I know that Mary played such an important role in leading me back to her Son.  Even though I have read this paragraph from Pope Benedict before now, this image of Mary as a “Star of Hope” resonates deeply now, and my heart is renewed with gratitude for Mary’s assistance in guiding me through the shadows into the bright light of Christ’s love for me.  Regardless of how confusing, difficult, or dark the journey may be for me, I know that I can always turn to Mary who always reflects the light of hope which invites me to trust in her Son.

The final paragraph of Spe salvi is a beautiful prayer to Mary, and it is well worth your read.  In the interest of space, I offer the final line as a prayerful plea to her to continue to show herself our Mother and our Star of Hope:

Thus you remain in the midst of the disciples as their Mother, as the Mother of hope. Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us and guide us on our way! (SS 50)

Details, details… When reading the scriptures, it can be easy to gloss over little details that seem to be insignificant or repetitive. Very often, we need a great saint or insightful person to shake us out of whatever stupor we are in when reading the sacred words so that the full meaning can flow from the fountain of life that is the divine Word. One example of this happening to me comes in that most well known of passages: the Annunciation from the Gospel of Luke. 

In the first chapter of Luke, we hear of the Archangel Gabriel visiting the virgin named Mary to ask for her consent to be the mother of God. Mary humbly asks, “How can this be, since I do not know man?” (Lk 1:34). Luke records this as the response: “The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God’” (Lk 1:35). Simple enough. Still, whenever I read this passage, I tend to conflate the two actions of God here into one phrase, seeing them as simply parallel lines: The Holy Spirit will overshadow you. 

There is nothing wrong with reading this verse the way I just described. It is possible to interpret them as a Jewish way of speaking in parallel, repetitive phrases to emphasize a point. We see that all the time in the Psalms, and in like manner, Luke could simply be highlighting the power of the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. In my case, I did not even consider another way of reading them until I came across a commentary passage in the writings of St. Bonaventure. 

St. Bonaventure clearly sees this verse as describing two actions of God: One action: the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary; and a second, simultaneous action: the power of the Most High overshadowing her. Near the beginning of his short work, The Tree of Life, St. Bonaventure explains, “When she gave her consent to him, the Holy Spirit came upon her like a divine fire inflaming her soul and sanctifying her flesh in perfect purity. But the power of the Most High overshadowed her (Luke 1:35) so that she could endure such fire.” In this fascinating description, St. Bonaventure sees God as both descending upon Mary to incarnate the Son of God in her womb, and at the same time, powerfully accustoming her to receive the Divine presence of God in perfect peace, enduring the fire of God’s life and love. 

As an addition here too, I cannot help but be reminded of the invocation to the Holy Spirit in the prayer to the Holy Trinity by St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. St. Elizabeth calls out to the Holy Spirit, recognizing that His desire for each of us is to become little “Christs” in the world, Christians in name and in truth. She prays, “O Consuming Fire, Spirit of Love, overshadow me so that the Word may be, as it were, incarnate again in my soul. May I be for him a new humanity in which he can renew all his mystery.” Though only the Blessed Virgin Mary was privileged to bear Jesus bodily in her womb and to be his mother in the flesh, every Christian is called to bear Jesus to the world by being a member of his body and living His life, death, and resurrection in the world in our own lives. He chooses to come to the world in us and through us, and he joins us to his body by the power of the Holy Spirit, ordinarily working through the sacraments. 

The Holy Spirit once came upon Mary and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. May that same Holy Spirit come upon our Church to fill us with the fire of his life and his love. May he draw us ever more deeply into the mystery of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son. May we rejoice at the birth of our King, and may he be born ever anew in our hearts and in our lives. Come, Lord Jesus! Come, Holy Spirit! Lead us to the Father!

Over the past several weeks, I have had a more-frequent-than-normal exposure to death.  Just before Thanksgiving, within a span of six days, we had three funerals here at the Cathedral.  We also unexpectedly lost two of our diocesan priests, Father Joe Ring who was 66 years old, and Father Daren Zehnle, who was just 47 years old.  Both of these priests were in active assignments, so their loss is all the more difficult.  I am also aware of members of our parish who have lost loved ones unexpectedly in the past month.  Finally, over the past week, I had the privilege of offering the Last Rites to two individuals who were coming to the end of their earthly journey.

Throughout all of these experience with death, reflecting on how they affect me personally, and how others are affected by those deaths, there is a line from the funeral liturgy that keeps coming back to me.  It comes from one of the options for the Preface in the Mass for the Dead.  The line goes like this: “Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed not ended.” (Preface I for the Dead) As human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, we know that an essential aspect of our humanity is that we exist in relation to others.  First and foremost, we exist in our relationship with God, who is a communion of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Blessed Trinity.  We also exist in communion with the many relationships with others here on earth – our family, our friends, and indeed all of humanity.  Therefore, when we express that in death “life is changed, not ended”, we can most certainly apply that to these relationships.  When we or a loved one dies, our relationships may be changed, but they are not ended.  

The Holy Father reflects on this in the next paragraph of Spe salvi as he continues his treatment of Purgatory, addressing how those relationships, changed but not ended, continue to be united especially through our prayer for them:

The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today…we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. (SS 48)

As the pope notes, this belief of the connection that remains after death is a source of great comfort to us as we struggle with their physical absence in our lives.  If this bond is not broken with death, we can be filled with hope and joy about the promise of what eternal life in Heaven will look like as all of those relationships that began in this life,  first with God, and then with others, will be brought to a fulfillment that surpasses anything we ever experienced on this earth.  In that regard, we find new peace in the words of St. Paul about our Christian hope in what awaits us, namely that “hope does not disappoint.” (Rom 5:5) While we still struggle here with that separation and may naturally feel sadness, disappointment, uncertainty, etc., let us be reassured in our faith which believes that in death, life is changed, not ended, and that the Lord continues to keep us united to Him and one another through the gift of His grace and love, present most especially in the Eucharist, where we meet Him and our loved ones each time we come to Mass.

Later this week, we will come to the seventeenth day of December. This day is one that catches my attention as it comes year by year. First of all, it is the traditional feast day of the Prophet Daniel – that great saint whose name I share. It’s not a feast we celebrate on our calendar, but it is nonetheless his feast day. Second, this day is the beginning of the final part of Advent accentuated in the prayer of the Church by the “O Antiphons” sung at Evening Prayer in the Divine Office. Between these two meanings behind December 17 there is a thematic connection which sheds light on the hope of the people of Israel and the joy of the coming of the Messiah. 

In this latter part of Advent, the Church turns her focus very intentionally from the second coming of Christ at the end of time to his first humble coming in the flesh. The Church enters, through her liturgy and prayers, into the expectant hope of the people of Israel. They desired more than anything that their redeemer would come to set them free. The “O Antiphons” strike to the heart of this longing with Old Testament imagery taken from the great prophets.

“Come!” is the great cry from the heart of God’s people. Come and set us free! Come and give us light! Come! O Wisdom of God, O leader of the House of Israel, O Root of Jesse’s stem, O Key of David, O Radiant Dawn, O King of all nations, O Emmanuel, Come! Each of these messianic titles we can read clearly as fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is God’s Wisdom, Emmanuel – God with us, the radiant dawn, King of the nations, springing forth from Jesse’s family tree. 

We want to grow in our desire for his coming to birth in this world. It is good for our souls to enter that depth of longing and thirsting for the coming redemption. Jesus came and his coming can seem so ordinary to us now. In reality, however, it was necessary and it was redemption. We go back, then, in our imagination and in our prayer and rest with the people of Israel in their hope and yearning. The longed-for Messiah is coming, and the Church cries out with Israel, “Come!”

Though there were many prophecies concerning this messiah throughout the Old Testament, some even as far back as in Genesis, the longing of the Israelites and the more precise prophecies come out in the writings of the prophets. Each great prophet gives us varying “facets,” you could say, of the messiah. For example, our understanding of Jesus as the good shepherd is built not only on Jesus’ words in the Gospels but on the writings of Ezekiel; much of our understanding of the work of Jesus’ atonement through suffering is built not only on Jesus’ suffering recorded in the Gospels but on the writings of Isaiah about the suffering servant. 

The Prophet Daniel too gives us a unique angle on this Messiah in a way that prepares the way near the end of Advent. The angel Gabriel appeared not only to Mary but to Daniel also (Daniel 8:16). Daniel sees a vision of this messiah being a “son of man” but also being given power and dominion and an everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:14). This future leader will be a King over a Kingdom that will overshadow and overpower all other kingdoms on earth, and he will be like a rock not hewn by human hands (Daniel 2:44-45).

Gabriel announces the coming of the new King. He is coming, and with Israel, we can desire his coming. Come, O King of Kings, rule over us and keep us in the peace of God’s Kingdom. Amen.