The Church’s Lenten liturgical calendar is interrupted with this celebration of Christ’s Incarnation. He becomes flesh, human and “God with Us.” It does seem to enter well into our Lenten reflections.

Mary of Nazareth has been waiting! What we listen to will influence highly what we hear. Mary, as a faithful young Jewish woman has been listening to the Jewish Scriptures with its many promises, predictions and surprising personal encounters with God. We reflect liturgically today that she was not exactly frightened or even surprised at Gabriel’s appearance. She had listened and heard and so her soul, her spirit was available to her acceptance of this visitor.
Apparently, she was disturbed and frightened, not at the visit, but the message, the call, and promises offered.
There had been stories to which Mary had listened; Sarai and Abram, the call of Moses, and David, the Prophets themselves. Surprised, they were, unworthy and unfit, but invited.

We might insert into the litany, such invocations as ”Mary ever-listening, Mary ever-available, Mary made-worthy,”        pray for us.

Mary listened, heard, reacted humanly and responded generously. She did not stop these elements of a relationship of trust and surprises.

Now to our living and listening these days in the Second Week of Lent. We are encouraged to reflect on just to what we are listening ourselves. Our souls and spirits, as with Mary, are moved, injured and or consoled by what we hear. “Giving up” is a Lenten practice, and can quite gracefully orient our activities. There are sounds, voices, noises which are quite harmful to our living receptively. I am not suggesting total silence or withdrawal from life. I do suggest withdrawing from what is not life, not grace, not relational. What takes me down? The downer we feel, the less relational we become. I know of families who are divided by politics and so are divided, separated, angry and dismissive. I wonder to what they have been listening which makes them unavailable to listen to each other.  Doesn’t sound like Easter at all, but it does sound like it does keep us separated from what separates us from our better selves, our graceful presence.
I remember clearly my dear mother’s habit of making sure she listened to the hourly local radio news. As a practicing Irish woman, she responded, when I asked, that she wanted to know who had died whom she might have known or knew. I think she was lifted by what she heard and especially that not one of her friends had died.