Luke 1:39-44        Pregnant with promise

Who was the first evangelist?  Does Mary come to mind?  If we understand evangelisation as spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ, we will surely recognise that the mother of Jesus was the very first evangelist, and a powerful one at that.  She was the first to carry Jesus to others.  When her presence prompted Elizabeth to be filled with the Holy Spirit, she became a model for all who seek to share Christ’s light with others.

Over time, our images of Mary have become rather sanitised, partly due to cultural perceptions of the role of women but also due the longstanding correlation in Church tradition between ‘holiness’ and ‘purity’ for women: ‘This highly symbolic figure, with practically all traces of humanity and womanhood removed, with no obvious sexual characteristics, and no hint whatsoever of any female carnality, was exactly what the Church wished for women.’  Today, however, we return to Mary’s roots, to her early appearance as a brave, decisive, breathless, excited young woman who rushed to Elizabeth’s house, pregnant with God’s promise, pregnant with joy, carrying the Word of God, passing it on.

Many of us have a particular devotion to Mary.  Advent is an ideal time to reflect on what Mary can teach us about being a disciple and ‘God-bearer’ (Theotokos).  God asks each of us to be bearers of his love and his Word.  Our challenge is to create a space for God in all of our human experience, in our joy and our brokenness.  Let us follow in the footsteps of the first evangelist, Mary.  Let us listen to the experiences of the women in our Church and society who, through their strength and enthusiasm, continue the task of carrying Christ in and to the world.

© Triona Doherty & Jane Mellet, 2021.  The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark.  (Dublin: Messenger Publications 2021).

“The way to begin healing the wounds of the world is to treasure the Infant Christ in us; to be not the castle but the cradle of Christ; and, in rocking that cradle to the rhythm of love, to swing the whole world back into the beat of the Music of Eternal Life.

– Caryll Houselander