Homily for Tuesday, 22 December 2020– Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent

Readings of the day: 1 Samuel 1:24-28; Responsorial Canticle: 1 Samuel 2:1, 4-5, 6-7, 8abcd; Luke 1:46-56

Here is bit of Catholic trivia for us: How many Catholics have been named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”? The answer is fifteen.

The fifteenth and latest, of course, is U.S. President Elect Joe Biden, alongside Vice President Elect Kamala Harris (not a Catholic) for 2020. But the sixth of these fifteen Catholics to be named Time’s “Person of the Year” was Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, alongside fellow Apollo 8 crew members Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, in 1968. Anders took a famous photograph of the “earthrise” from just above the surface of the moon.

In the Time interview for 1968’s “Person of the Year” issue, Anders asked rhetorically about his “earthrise” photo that made him consider how insignificant the Earth is in the universe: “Are we really that special”?

In Luke’s Gospel today, in a similar but somewhat more eloquent way than Bill Anders, Mary acknowledges that, well, we are really not all that special. In fact, we are nothing on our own, but we are everything to and with God. Mary prays in her “Magnificat” that we hear today: “My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.”

I credit a former director of campus ministry at St. Joseph’s College [of the University of Alberta in Edmonton] for first pointing out to me that Mary’s “Magnificat” is almost verbatim the prayer of Hannah in the Old Testament in thanksgiving after conceiving her son Samuel. Hannah prays, and we hear in our Responsory Canticle today, “[God] brings low; he also exalts.”

To us, really not all “that special” as Bill Anders once pointed out, God has appeared to us as a fellow “lowly servant”; as human. And so we enter into these final preparations for our Christmas celebration of God having “looked with favour on” us, his “lowly servant(s),” a tiny speck in this immense universe and, by his Son, Jesus Christ, having exalted us; having become human like us; having made us special beyond all telling; having saved us.