The More Physical, the Better the Revelation

Homily for the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Gerard Manley Hopkins, a great Jesuit poet, wrote of Mary:

“of her flesh He took flesh,
He does take fresh and fresh,
though much the mystery how,
not flesh but spirit now,
and makes o marvelous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive,
Him, morning noon and eve.”

You may never have heard of this particular poet or this particular poem. As is most of his poetry, these lines make us pause. As Jesus took his flesh from Mary, she continues to conceive him in each of us, for our vocation is to bring Jesus to birth in our “now.” Just as Jesus was born of a virgin in Nazareth, through our own actions, we can make Jesus present in our time and place.

There is a philosophical principle that the more physical a revelation is, the more perfect it is. This is precisely why the Church asks us the human genealogy of Jesus, to impress upon us that Jesus was a physical human being, a man – God in the flesh. It is also true that a person’s psychological health is revealed in the harmony between the inner self and the outer gesture. What we are celebrating in today’s Eucharistic liturgy is God’s inner being revealed in the perfect physical revelation of the body of a blessed child whose first experience of God’s love was in the arms of Anne and in the care of her father, Joachim.

God had been creating, – in time, in words, gestures, persons and events – a history of self-revelation, revealing God’s very being, Love. Mary becomes part of that self-revelation. Her inner self is uttered in her acceptance of God’s will. The more physical, the more perfect – which is Mary by birth and name. At the angel’s arrival in her life, Mary was, in a sense, reborn so as to give birth to the Final Physical Revelation of God’s inner reality, Salvific Love.

Time takes time and so does God. Mary grew up with God’s history in mind and heart, then took into her body the perfect physical presentation of her faith and God’s care. Mary’s being born is the end of ambiguity, the end of the question mark. It is the birth of the definite, the exclamation mark. Mary was born into time as we were, and she played out her part in the revelation of God’s love as we continue to do. We each are the revelation, as Mary was, of the interior Love of God made flesh in Mary’s body through whom the final display is made in the Perfect Body of Jesus the Christ.

We celebrate her Nativity today, the Mother of the Church.