Song of Songs 2:8-14 or Zephaniah 3:14-18 / Luke 1:39-45
Every now and then, we will see photos of some people jumping into the air, with their hands raised and their feet off the ground.
Usually it is the younger people who can do such things; the older people can't jump that high and their bones may not be able to take the impact of landing.
Yet such photos of people suspended in mid-air can be quite amusing. They don't seem to be going up and neither do they seem to want to come down to earth.
But when the Son of God came down to earth and became man, He entered into the womb of a humble and simple young girl to take on human flesh.
For God to become man and take on human flesh with all its weakness and limitations is indeed a great mystery that is incomprehensible and maybe even be unacceptable.
Yet God became man so that man can go back to God. That is as simply as we can put it and yet it is not that easy to comprehend either.
Nonetheless this great mystery of God becoming man is the reality that we prepare for during Advent and which we celebrate at Christmas.
It doesn't really matter how much or how deeply we understand this mystery. Let us simply rejoice and exult with all our heart, as the 1st reading urges us, because the Lord our God is in our midst.
And even in the womb of his mother, John the Baptist leapt for joy at the presence of the Saviour in the womb of Mary.
May our hearts also leap for joy because God became man so that He can be in our midst and to lead us back to God.