Advent Novena Meditation: Day 5

The following is the meditation for Day 5 (December 20) of the Advent Novena. For the full text of the novena, click here.

Day 5:

We have contemplated already the life the Child Jesus led within the womb of his immaculate mother. Let us turn now to the life Mary herself must have led during this same period, in order to understand, to the extent possible to our limited powers, the sublime mystery of the Incarnation and the way in which we ought to respond to it.

Mary was filled with constant longing for the moment in which she would behold that earthly beatific vision: the face of God incarnate. She would soon see the human face destined to illuminate Heaven for all eternity. She would see the love of a child reflected upon the same eyes whose brightness was to bring everlasting joy to the multitude of the elect. She would see that tender face every day, every hour, for many years to come. She would witness in Him the apparent ignorance of childhood, the particular charms of youth, the thoughtful serenity of adulthood. She would even enjoy the freedom of doing as she liked with the Infant’s divine face: to press it against her own with all the liberty of maternal love; to cover in tender kisses the lips destined to pronounce judgment upon the world; to contemplate each one of his features, whether dreaming or waking, until she knew each one by heart. How ardently she must have longed for that day!

Such was the life of expectation that Mary led. It was a life in itself unheard of, and yet it did not for that reason cease to be a glorious model for every Christian life. Let us not be content to marvel at Jesus residing in Mary, but let us realize that he lives also within us in potency, essence, and presence.

Truly, Jesus is constantly being born in us and from us through the good works that He gives us the power to accomplish, through our cooperation with his grace, through the way in which a soul that lives in that grace becomes itself Mary’s womb forever, an interior Bethlehem without end. Let us realize that during those instants after receiving communion, Jesus really and substantially lives within us as both God and man, because that same Child who once lived within Mary, lives now also in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. What is such an existence, if not a participation in the life of Mary during those nine wonderful months, and a state of expectation, like hers, full of spiritual delights?