(Mk13:33-37) 2000 years ago every Jewish maiden dreamed she would be the Messiah's mother. No doubt someone actually aspiring to this would seek a husband like Mary's Joseph, but would she wouldn't expect him to leave her untouched even in Marriage? Little did anyone know that the Messiah would be God's Son too. So Mary of Nazareth was journeying in the Spirit along the only path to divine maternity - virginity.
We are body and soul. The angels, being pure spirits, are much simpler. Yet God is infinitely simpler than them. In God there is no difference between acting and existing: God is His acts of knowledge and love. Nobody could have guessed that these two acts in God give rise to three distinct persons, who are one in nature. The second person is Son of the First in their divine nature and son of Mary in our human nature. Her son from the fullness of time, His son from all eternity - truly Mary's son, yet infinitely more so the Father's. So the property of human sonship whereby no son can have two fathers, is infinitely more true of divine sonship. The incarnate Son of the Father couldn't have a human father as well. He needed a virgin-mother.
The Father and Son are one in all but person, in which They perfectly complement each other. From Them both, as from one source, proceeds the Holy Spirit. All 3 are one in nature, but the Father has primacy. Likewise, Adam and Eve are equal in all but gender, in which they perfectly complement one another. From them both, as from one source, proceeds the human race. All share the same nature, yet Adam has primacy. This all means that matrimony is a prophetic symbol of the Blessed Trinity.
John the baptist is the great prophet of Advent, who announced Jesus coming. According to St. Augustine he was like the voice or sound in our ear that announces the word or concept in our mind. The sound dies out in our ear after it heralds the concept which remains in our mind. John himself said that he must decrease and Jesus must increase. The prophetic symbol always falls short of the reality it heralds just as John's baptism fell short of Jesus'.
The kingdom David won by the sword in the Old Testament was a prophetic symbol of the Messiah's coming kingdom. So many Jews supposed it too would be based on the sword, much like the Roman Empire. Again, the prophetic symbol died when the reality it heralded appeared. Our Lord told Peter to drop his sword. For if Jesus' kingdom were of this world then his followers would fight to prevent him from being killed. King David shed much blood yet died in bed. Christ our king shed his own blood when He died a violent death for us.
Even matrimony had to die when the reality if announced finally appeared. And die it did in the virginity of Jesus' mother, when a divine Person stepped for the first time from the bosom of the Trinity into the Womb of Mary - from incomprehensible mystery into world history.
The Devil gained access to Adam's heart when Eve stood guard at humanity's gate. She believed the ancient serpent's message whereas Mary believed the angel Gabriel's. No praise is enough for you, Mother Mary, in whom today's gospel is perfectly fulfilled. You proclaimed yourself "handmaid" as you welcomed the Lord into your womb, - which is forevermore the Gate of Heaven. Amen!
