Advent draws our focus to a consideration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We can say that there is a triptych which connects the fourth Sunday of Advent with Christmas. It is the triptych of the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Nativity and Mary is in all three.

• The Annunciation is when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and it is this encounter that the beautiful prayer of The Angelus captures and that the Ave Maria opens up with when it uses the words of greeting that the angel Gabriel utters: ‘Ave, María, grátia plena, Dóminus tecum.’;

• the Visitation is when Mary goes to see Elizabeth immediately after her encounter with the Angel Gabriel and it is this encounter that gives us the 2nd part of the Ave Maria ‘Benedicta tu in muliéribus, et benedíctus fructus ventris tui’;

• and the Nativity is when Jesus is born in Bethlehem and here we have the great hymn celebrating the birth of Jesus, the Gloria.

Now all three mysteries form three of the five Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary and so echo the joy of a hope realised.

The 4th Sunday of Advent gives us the Mystery of the Visitation wherein Luke presents Our Lady and her cousin, Elizabeth. The scene of the Visitation is full of clues as to the significance of this encounter between Mary and Elizabeth. Luke is presenting the theme that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant. The Visitation depicted in Luke 1:39-44 is full of echoes from Biblical history when King David danced and leapt before the Ark [2 Samuel 6: 2, 5-16, 23] as he brought it into Jerusalem, after it had spent three months in the hill country of Judah blessing the house of O′bed-e′dom the Gittite [2 Sam 6:10-11] - see Scott Hahn’s excellent article on this:

What's Really Happening at The Visitation: The Ark Comes to Elizabeth

The theme that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant is also found echoed in the Book of the Apocalypse where Mary is depicted as the new Ark in Apoc 11:19-12:2:

Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 

She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth

You can read more about this in De Maria’s article on Catholic 365 ‘Ark of the New Covenant (Rev 11:19-12:1)’

However, I want us to focus in on what I call the Chivalry of Grace that we see played out in the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Nativity. Here we see an interaction of divine, angelic and human [graced and fallen] persons who witness to the truth that grace makes us objectively oriented to the good of the other and not to the detriment of the other. It also makes us aware of how to treat the other with charity, truth, justice, mercy and gracefulness.

The angel Gabriel bows before the grace-filled beauty of the virgin, Mary, who is full of grace as she has been preserved from sin from the moment of her conception and has stayed in that grace by freely and obediently following the will of the Lord. Here is a beauty that is not cosmetic nor derives from cosmetics but rather arises from a soul conceived immaculately and adorned by thoughts, words and deeds that reflect, flow and grow from this grace such that a grace-filled beauty shines out of the body that embodies this precious soul.

Scott Hahn observes that in Luke 1:42, Elizabeth bursts out with an exuberant cry: ‘Elizabeth "exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!'" She is basically the first human to pray the "Hail Mary!"‘ And Hahn further notes that this word ‘exclaimed’ is only used once in the New Testament but in the Old Testament it is used to describe the celebration that went with bringing the ark into Jerusalem. It refers to the music of the Levitical singers and musicians that accompanied the processions of the Ark which included David leaping and dancing before the ark!

Not surprisingly, Our Lady, as the Ark of the New Covenant, has been a major inspiration to both verse and music in the Liturgy of the Church, as well as being a source of inspiration for sacred art and architecture. Indeed, she has also tamed the wild savagery of warriors and created the Age of Chivalry where killers became Knights that protected the poor, pilgrims, orphans, widows or women’s virtue. St Bernard very much had the spirituality of a knight and saw in Our Lady the source of grace and chivalry in his life. It is not surprising then that he wrote not just the Memorare to Our Lady but also ‘The Primitive Rule of the Templars’ [Bernard de Clairvaux and Hugues de Payens].

If Advent is the season where the Theological virtue of Hope predominates then God inspires us to the Hope that we can be better, think better, speak better, act better, do better and live better. So the Lord has given us Our Lady to show what Grace can accomplish in a human being. Our Lady is the application of this uncreated grace applied in time and space, from conception to death and beyond to a chosen human being. Our Lady is given to us not just to be the highest honour of our race but also the pattern of grace for all human beings. God gives us Our Lady to inspire us to a way of life that embodies the graceful and gracious forms of heavenly chivalry. To lose such a hope is to begin the long descent into gracelessness which includes loss of reverence, loss of manners, loss of decorum, loss of kindness such that a growth in irreverence, rudeness, boorishness, crudeness and belligerence thereby follows.

How many times in Advent have we seen the Mass debased by priests who have become flippant, careless, irreverent and dismissive of both red and black, word and rubric, form and matter, ritual and colour, decor and style so that the Mass loses its external grace and form for the sake of a quick Mass, a simple Mass, a minimalist Mass, a functionalist Mass or an entertaining Mass? Yet if the altar, sanctuary and tabernacle are bare and void of colour, form and beauty, strangely, the priest is not! Oft times we find the chasuble worn by such a priest, however ugly, plain or cheap it may be, is the only thing with colour on the whole sanctuary!

Let not homes follow this loss of beauty that has overtaken some of our churches. Let not our homes lose the beauty and grace of Christmas. Do not abandon the Christmas tree, the lights and baubles, the nativity set and the wise men, the Christmas giving of stockings on the mantlepiece or on bedposts, and presents wrapped up and placed under the tree. May Advent be a time that we prepare our homes, our churches, our family and filial relationships, and our souls for the beauty that is the chivalry of Grace.

Let us not be like Scrooge in these Advent times. Do not stifle the generosity of spirit that prepares the way for the sacred time of Christmas when God with divine self-abandonment came to us, as one of us, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. A baby that came to a stable with hosts of angels in attendance and despite the hunger and danger of Herod and the servants of evil, so too came the wise men and the shepherds of Bethlehem to gather around the manger, heedless of danger or death!

May we too gather together fearlessly in our homes around the Nativity scene of St Francis of Assisi and the Christmas tree of St Boniface with the same spirit of the wise men and the poor shepherds who did not let fear of danger nor fear of death stop them attending the God-Man wrapped in swaddling clothes.

May Our Lady of Grace and St Joseph watch over you as they watched over the baby Jesus in all his defencelessness and may the hosts of angels gather round your homes to protect you from the harbingers of doom and the messengers of fear that plague the airways!