God chose Nazareth to play a key role in world history!

"God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something" (1 Cor 1:27-28). Nowhere is this disproportion between God and the means He chooses more evident than with the Virgin Mary.

In Galilee, Nazareth was the butt of jokes. People would say: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (Jn 2:45). But it is precisely Nazareth that God chose to play a key role in world history!

Mary was planning to remain a virgin; she was prepared to face the open marks of contempt addressed to barren women at the time. But it was to her that God sent Gabriel, who told her: "The holy Child who will be born of you will be called Son of the Most High."

God made something new, surprising, unheard of; and the most admirable thing about Mary's attitude is that she so quickly joined God's plan, without thinking of her own poverty. She was certainly surprised to hear herself be called "full of grace, more blessed than all other women." However, the Angel’s words: "You have found grace with God" was enough to dispel all her fears: she instantly knew that her life’s mission had begun.

What was Mary, an obscure young girl from a scorned town, looking for in life? Simply to remain available to God in both heart and body, when He would reveal His will in His own time. Her great strength, her only strength, was that she was preparing in advance to let God do His work, because nothing is impossible for Him. When the deprivation of Bethlehem came, and when the Cross of Jesus came, the certainty of the Angel's words sustained her: "Do not fear, Mary: you have found favor with God."

In times of joy and in times of darkness, Mary never ceased to count on God. The Magnificat contains the secret of her hope, in a verse that sums up both the Old Covenant and the spiritual discovery of her fervent youth: "He remembers His love."

Father Jean Lévêque, Carmelite of the Province of Paris

Excerpt from the homily on the Gospel of Luke (Lk 1:26-38)

Adapted from Vie Monastique