Today's Mass Readings for December 19
The Woman shall bear a Son. This is THE sign of scripture, of the first proclamation of the Gospel given to Eve in Genesis 3:15, the promise of the Messiah in Isaiah of the Virgin who will name her child Emmanuel in Isaiah 7:14, and the last book of Scripture with the Woman whose child is born in the heavens in Revelation 12:1. From cover to cover the Scriptures talk about it. It is one of the most common artistic depictions, one that we need to ask the Holy Spirit to paint on our hearts - the Woman and her Son.
It is also an icon of the barren being made fruitful since a virgin conceived the God-man, those who were thought to be humiliated with lifelessness are now fertile.
If we are not honest with ourselves and live cloaked in a mask of presumption we will say with the spirit of the world, "I am a good person, I haven't killed anybody, and I try to be nice to everybody." We won't be able to admit that we are barren. We do not know how to love the way God does. We are very very poor. We don't have really any humility, faith, virtue, or merit. That is when God comes to us in our emptiness and fills us to overflowing with HIS fruitfulness, his Son. Only the Woman can give him to us just as only was by the Virgin Mary that he was born. The Mediatrix of the Nations, She who gives Christ to poor hearts must obtain for us the great grace of the Savior.
May Mary's image, holding the babe who will save the world from death and infertility, be painted on our hearts that we may turn and be made worthy to receive Christ the Lord in a new way this Christmas.
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