David loved the Lord, more than anything else. Despite his sins, despite his wandering eye, he loved the Lord with his whole heart and soul and mind and life.
And so, he wanted to build the most worthy house for God to live in. A house where people could come and visit him, listen to the Lord and adore him.
So too, the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to find a worthy dwelling place for the Lord, the Christ, the Emmanuel, God-with-us.
And the Angel, an ancient story goes, searched the earth for a worthy place for the Son of God to live in. He considered a magnificent Temple of Gold, bedecked with fine jewels and built atop ten thousand marble steps, as from its gates four rivers flowed, abundant with life. Sure this would be a worthy dwelling place for the Son of God, he thought. But it was not worthy enough.
And so the Angel flew to the peak of the highest mountain on earth, where winds blew the snows to even greater heights, and upon which the sun glistened and danced. Nowhere was the sky more blue or the heights more breath-taking. Perhaps here, the Angel thought, we could build the temple with jewels and marbles and rivers, and this might become a worthy dwelling place for the Son of God. But it was not quite worthy.
So Gabriel looked up at the heavens, where the stars twinkled and shone against a cold night sky with an unimaginable beauty, where God had so woven the distant stars together that they seemed to embrace the earth with a transcendent power all their own. Here, at last, he declared is a worthy dwelling to enthrone the Son of the living God. But it was not worthy.
Discouraged, the old story goes, the poor angel returned to heaven and begged the most high God to show him a worthy dwelling place upon the earth for his co-eternal Son.
And so it happened, that the Angel Gabriel was “sent from God
to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.”
For she, in her littleness, of all the great palaces and places upon the earth, was the only one worthy to embrace the Son of the Most High God as the fruit of her womb. This confused and frightened little girl, was alone full of grace. This handmaid of the Lord, who surrendered all to the will of God. She alone was worthy, and she alone was “a fit dwelling place” for the Son of God.
Which is why we call Mary “the Ark of the Covenant,” for just as in the former dispensation God and his commandments dwelled in an Ark of acacia wood and gold, so, quite literally, the Christ, the Son of the Living God lived in the Blessed Virgin’s womb, as her flesh was quite literally joined with his. And herein lies the pre-eminent reason why we call her blessed among women, for no other woman will ever experience this kind of communion in the flesh with God.
And just as when the first Ark of the Covenant was finished the the Shekinah, the Glory of God came down upon it and it became the dwelling place of God, so (you just heard) when the Holy Spirit come down upon the Blessed Virgin, Jesus came to live in her womb and she became the living shrine of the Word of God, the Ark of the New and Eternal Covenant.
This is why Saint Athanasius called the Blessed Virgin Mary “greater than any other greatness.” He prays: “You are greater than them all O, [Ark of the] Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold! You are the ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which divinity resides,”
All of which is echoed in the Catechism: “Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion…the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is ‘the dwelling of God . . . with men.’”
And not only is she the Ark of the Covenant, but she is the Gate of Heaven, as well: the door through which the Son of God chose to enter the world. For, as Saint John Henry Newman tells us, “it was through her that our Lord passed from heaven to earth.”
And this door is a two way street, for just as through her Jesus took flesh and entered our world, so too she is the porta caeli, the door through which we enter heaven. As St. Bonaventure tells us that “Mary is called gate of heaven because no one can enter that blessed kingdom without passing through her.”
Mary is the porta caeli by her example, for no one can get to heaven without imitating her example of “fiat,” of total submission to God’s will. For, in the words of the Council Fathers, as she is “the image and beginning of the Church…so too does she shine forth on earth until the day of the Lord shall come as a sure sign of hope and solace to the people of God during their journey on Earth.”
Finally, Mary is our our most powerful intercessor with her Son, which is why we so often ask her to “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” So, like the Magi, let us go to this beautiful lady who holds in her arms the one who is our hope and salvation. And let us entrust ourselves to her intercession, her example and her care. Let us pray this Advent, to her in whose womb Christ willed to be formed for nine months, begging her to teach us, how he might be formed in us, as well.
