We’ve come now almost to the end of our Advent journey: the joy of Christmas is close at hand.  Our focus today is trust.  The readings are all about our trust that the Lord is faithful to his promises.  The first reading is one of the most important passages of the Old Testament.  God promises to King David an everlasting kingdom.  He promises a permanent relationship of love, of fatherhood, of care and grace.  King David then sings of this covenant with God powerfully in the Psalm:  “The promises of the Lord I will sing forever.  The Lord has said, My kindness is established forever.  I have made a covenant with my chosen one.  I will confirm your posterity and establish your throne for all generations.”  God’s promise to David is that what he is doing will be forever.  This establishment of human salvation won’t be like any other institution or nation or initiative or undertaking: even the strongest and most successful human nations and institutions come to an end eventually.  But God’s kingdom, the kingdom promised by God to David for his descendants, the kingdom of Christ: that kingdom won’t last for a 1000 years, or a 1000 generations, but for all time, all generations.  For ever.  God gives us the assurance that his promise will never fail: we can trust him, absolutely, no matter what. 

Now, sometimes we are plagued with doubts and uncertainties.  Sometimes God appears to have forgotten us.  He seems blind to our struggles, or just not to care.  This was certainly the experience of the Hebrew people during the exile.  The Babylonians came, sacked and conquered Jerusalem, and that was after God had made this promise to David.  It was reasonable for Israel to wonder how or if God was going to keep his promise.  But of course God did keep his promise, in an even more wondrous and radical way than they could have ever imagined. Their savior, their rescuer, was the Son of God himself, God-With-Us, made man and come to earth.  As St. Paul expresses, the words of the prophets now make sense, and God’s promise has been brought to its fulfillment, in the person of Jesus Christ.  And so our trust in God is totally reasonable; it’s neither blind nor foolish.  We can be sure that when God seems absent, he isn’t.  When he seems blind to our needs and deaf to our pleas for help, he is not.  We can be sure that God is planning, for each one of us, a more wondrous and radical fulfillment of his promises than we could ever imagine.  He is going to make everything right; heal all our wounds; comfort all our sorrows; fulfill all our needs.  We might get a glimpse of that on this earth, but if not, we know from our Faith that this will be one of the joys of heaven.  In heaven, we will finally see how God’s wisdom and power, his love and mercy and justice have been at work through it all.  “Why did God let this happen?”  “Why didn’t God step in?” : questions we have all asked.  In heaven we will see.  You will see how the tiny puzzle piece of your life, with all its jagged edges and confusing colors, fits into the great and beautiful picture which is God’s eternal plan. 

For now, we’re called to trust.  And we’re given the beautiful example of Our Lady to help us: Mary is the example of absolute trust in God.  Her response to the message of the angel is incredible.  Think about it: she didn’t have the benefit of being familiar with the story like we do: she’d never been to a Christmas pageant.  Her trust in God was so deep and so perfect that she was able to respond with trust to something almost too outlandish to be believed: just a young, simple girl from the country, engaged to a simple humble man: she is to bring forth the Son of God and the savior of the entire world?  She had no doubt.  She had only wonder: “how can this be?”  And her response is pure trust: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord: let it be done to me according to your word.”  She is the embodiment of trust.  And the more we love her, the closer we become to her through our prayer and devotion, the more her spirit of trust will become ours as well.  This is the truth of who we are, and the truth of who God is, our salvation, our justice, our hope.  He will always be faithful.  He will never abandon us.  He is always there.  And in the fullness of time, all things will be right.  Come Lord Jesus, quickly come.