Fourth Sunday of Advent: Love

The Air Love Breathes is Freedom

This a strange fourth Sunday of Advent being that it happens to share the calendar with Christmas Eve and might even shrink a bit in its shadow. But it would do us well to still light the fourth candle on Sunday morning and listen to Mary. She is, after all the theotokos – that is, the bearer of God. Her pregnancy deserves as much attention in our worship as the birth. After all, it didn’t have to happen. She could have responded to the angel with a firm, “yea, but no thanks…” And then where would we be? But Mary said “Yes” because Mary was given the freedom to say “no” as well. She is an exemplar our own lives of faith. We are given freedom: freedom to love or not to love, to say “yes” and to say “no” to God. And it is by God’s love we have this freedom. The air love breathes is freedom. May we know this love on this, strange, yet important fourth Sunday of Advent.