Each year as the holidays approach I think about the season as one symbolizing hope and peace, and I prayerfully listen for a deeper sense of the meaning of Christmas. Recently, as I pondered the Christmas story in the Bible (see Matthew 1 and 2, and Luke 1 and 2), I was particularly struck by Mary, the young Hebrew virgin, and by the depth of humility and obedience in her receptive prayer.
Mary, I reasoned, was a young girl, sitting quietly in prayer, contemplating the love of God and the purity of divine Love’s wholly spiritual creation. “What did she hear in prayer?” I asked myself. “What was she doing or thinking to receive so profound a message?”
The words she heard from the angel Gabriel may have meant nothing without Mary’s precious humility and receptivity to the divine message that would change human experience forever.
