The last words the angel Gabriel speaks to Mary in Sunday’s gospel echo God’s words to Sarah, Mary’s earliest foremother in faith — “Nothing is impossible with God.” Sarah and her husband, Abraham, wait into old age for the son that will fulfill God’s promise. “Go to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation….In you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12.1-3).
Sarah is well past menopause when she overhears three strangers whom Abraham has welcomed into their tent promise she will finally have a son. She laughs aloud. The strangers vanish when she laughs, and God speaks in their place. “Why did Sarah laugh?” God asks Abraham (18.14). “Is anything too wonderful for the Creator?”
Sarah denies she laughed, but God says, “Oh yes, you did laugh.” When the child of the old couple’s lifelong faith is born, they name him Isaac, which means in Hebrew laughter of God.
Israel’s faith begins with waiting for a child. In Sarah God does the impossible in a woman too old to conceive. In Mary God does the impossible in a woman too young, a girl who does not yet have a husband.
- What are you too old for God to do in you?
- What are you too young for God to make happen through you?