God won!
In Michael D. O’Brien’s fictional novel, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse, a future Jewish convert has witnessed the death of his parents and sister during the Holocaust. A lawyer, with a brilliant mind and promising political future, he questions where God was, and is, during such times of evil, death, and destruction, and proclaims that “Evil has won.” He later meets and marries a young Jewish woman named Ruth; a woman of deep faith who believes that God is “here”; ever-present in each couple whom He chooses and blesses with the power to create life and, in bringing a child into the world, to proclaim, “we won…God won!” Tragically, his expectant wife is killed when a terrorist’s bomb explodes in the marketplace and, during the ensuing years of deep emptiness, a spiritual journey begins that ultimately leads to Elijah’s conversion to Christianity and eventual priesthood.
In today’s Gospel reading, another young Jewish woman will conceive and bear witness to the fact that God always chooses life as a response to Evil, death, and destruction. Her child will also be killed. It has been this way throughout the centuries: the seemingly insignificant birth of individuals we would later refer to as Saints and Martyrs. The child Mary will conceive and bring into the world is Life itself: an ever-present Presence which cannot be destroyed by Evil or overcome by death. A Presence and a Life which St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of which “can be received in such a way that we become a living part of that Mystical Body and can be counted as His members.” Evil is overcome. Sin loses its power and death is not the final word. “We win!”