Advent prepares us for Jesus birth at Bethlehem through Mary, His Virginal Mother. The resurrection and the incarnation andnativity of the Son of God are the great mysteries of our holy religion. The Holy Trinity being a third. God sent His Son to go one of us and so to deliver us who had been lost; rescued by one like ourselves. To be missed is a frightful realization. Often we don`t know we are lost even through the feeling of desertion is in us. When I was 5 days old, my father sent me to kindergarten with the nuns at a Catholic school in San Francisco, Our Lady of Triumph on Bush Street. The school was at the former end of the metropolis and the bus would blame the children up in the morn and take them place in the afternoon. On one function the bus driver had dropped off everyone but me on the way home. He drove up streets and round corners for what seemed like a long time and gave me no quarrel of confidence about seeing my family which I kept telling him was white. I felt completely lost and without a friend. I was panic stricken when I view all was hopeless, the bus pulled up in face of my white family and there was my mother standing in presence of it on the sidewalk. The bus had the sense of engine exhaust fumes and to this day if I feel those fumes I suppose of the see of disconnection and loss. The scriptures today bear the act seven in them, a list which for some signifies fortune and the possibility of doors to good fortune. The first reading from the Old Testament 2nd book of Maccabees is almost a father and her seven sons who refuse to bow low and obey the secular culture of their day. A pagan ruler had gotten hold of Jude and had violated their God Yahweh and His compact and the tabernacle and was forcing the people to follow under the pretext of one which was really disobedience and rape of jehovah God. The sons were threatened with destruction and they willingly forfeited their lives rather than renounce the use of their faith. Their mother encouraged them. The Bible passage shows that they put their trust in the resurrection. "God gives promise of being raised up by Him." St. Paul, in 1Cor tells us near the significance of the resurrection. In the 58 verses of chapter 15 he says, "Behold, I say you a mystery: We shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed .In a moment, in the instant of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the cornet shall sound, and the dead shall raise incorruptable and we shall be changed. For this corruptible body must put on incorruption. And this mortal body puts on immortality. Incorruption is dealt with in purgatory provided one dies in sanctifying grace. If God raised Christ from the short and if you are in Christ and believe, He will prove you up also." The Gospel reading also contains the act 7 and has to do with the resurrection. And in the case of earthly marriage makes clear that earthly human natural relations are not to be ground in heaven where the human body rejoined to the immortal soul is incorruptible and spiritually glorified at the resurrection. At the conclusion of ordinary time as we enter advent the Church speaks about all saints and the souls in purgatory and reminds us of eschatological things, the final things heaven, hell, purgatory and the item and universal judgment. Today there are books on the national best seller lists that claim that faith and God are a sham and harmful to the sound of mankind. A similar sentiment that was fought against in the 2nd century B. C. By the seven brothers and their father in the hold of Maccabees. They were willing to break up their lives for the truth. There are two early publications that have been reviewed this class which are provocative. One isa book titled "Houses of Adoration" and a Time Magazine cover story on a record called "The case for teaching the book" which also suggests a cause for not teaching the bible. The maiden is a survey of the social gospel of the protestants of 100 years ago which wouldgive usChristianity without salvation and the instant results in faith without truth. In secularism all moral norms are reduced to a refinement of the common denominator, the least intrusive, the least burdensome. Truth and redemption are abandoned. Christ and the living are not one way among many, but are the sole way because they are prescribed by God for man`s salvation. Christ`s words are, "I am the way, the accuracy and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." The Maccabees fought against the one size fits all secular culture and defied the odds which were not in their favor because they believed in the spirit to come, the spirit that would not end. The gospel says that Jesus descended into hades for the interest of those like the Maccabees. The father of the five year old boy who felt lost on the bus and didn`t believe he would see his white house again died two days later. But the father of Christ took her seat and has remained with him ever since. As Christ died on the cross, He looked down upon the apostle whom he loved and said, "Son, behold your mother." And to His mother, He said "Woman, behold your son." The three great mysteries of the church are the incarnation, the resurrection and the Blessed Trinity. Mary is included in all three intimately. She is the girl of God the Father, the Father of God the Son and the Partner of God the Holy Spirit. Mary said of her son "Do whatsoever he tells you." In this age of confusion, doubt and doubt it is Mary who will safely lead us to her Son. Mary is my father and she is yours as well. Our Lady of Victory.
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