Br. Lain Wilson

The Blessed Virgin Mary, God-bearer

Luke 1:39-56

In his classic introduction to the Hebrew prophets, Abraham Heschel notes a characteristic of the prophet Isaiah: “Pathos is spoken of in Isaiah more frequently in an instrumental than in a personal sense. . . . the world’s great powers are instruments of the divine will.”[1]

The greatest expression for us Christians of the divine pathos is what John’s gospel reveals: “For God so loved the world that [God] gave [the] only Son” (John 3:16). For this supreme expression of love, God chose not one of the world’s great powers to be God’s instrument, but instead a poor young woman named Mary.

Celebrating Mary today reveals something about what God is up to, and something about what we are called to.

As we prepare to celebrate tomorrow the feast of Christ the King, today we can proclaim the words of a seventh-century hymn of praise to this poor young woman chosen by God: “Rejoice, for you are the throne of the King.”[2]

The figure of Mary invites us to gaze with joy on the mystery of divine humility: that the kingship of Christ we anticipate isn’t one that perpetuates our own broken kingdoms and empires, but instead chooses and embodies and exalts the humble and low. “[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly,” Mary sings in her great Magnificat (Luke 1:52). Saint Paul expresses a similar sentiment in his first letter to Corinth: “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong . . . what is low and despised . . . things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28).

And as we prepare to make room in our lives and in our hearts during the season of Advent for the coming of our Savior, today we proclaim that Christ is already here, present in Word and Sacrament and gathered Body of Christ.

The figure of Mary invites us to consider how we too are instruments of the divine pathos: humble people chosen to be bearers of God ourselves, bearing God’s love into a broken world that still cries out for justice and healing.

“Rejoice, through whom creation is renewed.” The hymn is addressed to Mary, but how do you hear it when you direct it to yourself? When you, like Mary, say “yes” to your own vocation as co-laborer with God? When you, like Mary, say “yes” to being an instrument of divine love?

Amen.

[1] A. J. Heschel, The Prophets: An Introduction (New York, 1962), 1:82.

[2] Akathist Hymn, first stasis, available online at https://www.goarch.org/-/the-akathist-hymn-and-small-compline (accessed November 22, 2025). The subsequent quotation from this hymn is also from the first stasis.