"When nothing is special, everything is."
On our refrigerator at home there is a note attached. It says, "When nothing matters, everything counts." My daughter, an art student in San Francisco, put it there. Another reading might be, "When there is nothing special, everything is." In her art work, Becky is trying to show the glimmering transcendence of ordinary life. The light of presence can shine through a paper cup lying by the side of the road just as it can shine through a famous religious painting -- say, a piece on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

There was nothing special about Mary. Nothing. She was an ordinary peasant woman engaged to an ordinary peasant man. Together they lived in a two-bit town, Nazareth. The disciple Nathaniel says about Nazareth in the Gospel of John, "What good can come out of Nazareth?" So, there was nothing special about Mary. Yet, there she was minding her own business, maybe mending her robe, or pounding some flour, when the angel Gabriel surprises her, "Greetings favored one!"

This is the glimmering transcendence of ordinary life. Something like this can happen to such a one as Mary. Where nothing is special, everything is. It is a gift in this Advent and Christmas season to ponder this story -- the ordinary is favored by God. If Mary, then all of us. God-with-us, Emmanuel comes as easily to the peasant's hovel as to the courts of power, as easily to streets of the city as to the mansions on the hill. God with us means God with all of us, the Spirit of God, the transcendent shimmering in ordinary life.

This story comes to us during Advent. Yet, in it we get the whole Christmas story, the story of God's incarnation. As ordinary Mary is favored, so favored are all of us. We are the beloved of God. God is with us. That's good news!