What is Possible?

            The valleys and hills surrounding Jerusalem are what the Scriptures refer to as the hill country of Judah.  In the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, a young woman makes an arduous journey into these hills because she has been told something, an impossible something.  She travels down from a tiny village and up into the hills surrounding Jerusalem to see her relative because the unexpected has happened.  This young woman has been visited by an angel, and was greeted with words that have echoed throughout the world ever since: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” (1:28)  She enters into the house of her relatives and is greeted with a phrase that has been spoken and cried and praised throughout the two thousand years since it was first heard: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (1:42)

            Both Mary, a virgin, and Elizabeth, a barren woman, have both been blessed with a child when it was impossible for each of them.  But impossible is such a human word, a finite word.  Impossible belongs to men and women who see only what can be seen with the eyes or touched with a hand.  Mary was able to see past that.  Even though she knew it was impossible, she consented to the angel’s word.  She recognized that she was small and that God was infinite.  She grasped the possibility of God’s presence breaking into our reality and the way He changes everything in the process.  Mary responded to God’s promise to act, and trusted that His greatness would provide for all the obstacles that were faced. 

            We each face many challenges: the bad economy, the struggles of a family, and the countless other impossibilities that we all face in our humanity.  However, all these pale in comparison to the greatest impossibility we face, becoming saints.  Our own eyes show us that we cannot do it.  Our own minds give us a million reasons why this is impossible.  Saints are someone else.  Saints are people like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, John Vianney, or Terese of Lisieux.  Surely that can’t be us.  However, the reason the angel came to Mary and the reality altering action of God that Mary perceived is just this: that we might be saints.  God did not become man just to teach us rules to live by.  Jesus came to transform everything and everyone, if we only let go of our own limitations and let Him.  Jesus came to make the impossible our reality.  He came, died, and rose again to unite us to God.