Please read the passage before the commentary.
The virgin will conceive and bear to a son.
I think that if you were study the deepest hopes of people, expressed in their mythologies and most ancient texts, you would discover an ancient longing for God to come among us in human form. In ancient Israel Isaiah gave form to this longing when he spoke to his king and promised him that a young woman would conceive and bear a son (Isaiah 7:10-14; 8:10).
The ancient text of Isaiah uses the Hebrew word for a woman of marriageable age, perhaps the wife of the king, perhaps denoting the continuing generation of children. It was remembered for many generations. Eventually the marriageable woman morphed into an unmarried girl, then into a virgin. In Mary’s time this ancient longing for God to come into the human race in a most symbolic way by a virgin.
This gospel text describes how God chose to fulfill the ancient and deepest hopers of the human race through a virgin named Mary. The conception of Mary enables the fulfillment of the ancient texts and mythologies of the ancient peoples; the desire God had put into every human generation since the creation of people is fulfilled in Mary’s conception of her Son.
God has a way of exceeding our hearts’ desires, a way of going beyond what we dare hope for in order to bring to fulfilment God’s designs for our good. The ancient desire for the continuing generations of the human race finds fulfilment in the promise of eternal life in the kingdom that will have no end.
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