A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.
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Today's gospel (Luke 1:26-38) recounts the mystery of the
Annunciation which is, as it were, the mystery central to our charism in COLW. The
Angel Gabriel came to Mary, greeting her with those words that are ever fresh: Hail
Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Mary is startled and troubled and
inquires what this might mean. Gabriel explains to her that she will conceive a
son and that He will be the saviour long-awaited by the people of Israel. Mary,
hearing in these words the vocation God was calling her to from all eternity, offered
her consent: let it be done to me according to your word.
In this gospel scene, Mary models for us three qualities
that are intrinsic to our following of Christ. Perhaps surprisingly, the first
of these is not a virtue but a state of mind: it is her objectivity. Our
attachments are so deep, our wounds are so serious, that objectivity escapes us
very often, but not so Mary. Mary, says St Luke, was greatly troubled and
tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. Her mind was not
warped by gentle delusions about herself; her perceptions did not pass through
a cloud of neediness. Her response, therefore, was not to say: well, where have
you been, I’ve been waiting? Rather, it was to test the spirits, as St Paul
says. Mary models for us the anti-enthusiast’s response to religious phenomena.
It is not disbelief; rather, it is prudence. This response reflects equally her
humility – for who would speak to a peasant girl in Nazareth in this way, she
could fairly wonder – but we shall return to that further on.
Upon hearing Gabriel’s explanation, Mary models for us a
second quality in this gospel scene with the following words: How will this
be, since I am a virgin? What we hear in this response is no longer merely
her objectivity but now her teachability. What she has heard is extraordinary.
She, the lowliest of Nazareth’s denizens, is called to be involved in the
realisation of the great hope of Israel. There is no doubt she understood both sides
of this mystery: the fulfilment of the promise of God, and its startlingly humble
and ordinary path. Teach me, Lord, is what her words mean here.
Show me, Lord, your ways, for they are not ours. God’s plan for the saving of
the human race would pass none of the stress tests the cynical human mind can
put it under. But then, God could make the very stones sing if He so desires. He
does not need high performance; just our consent. He does not need our
achievements; He asks us only to return to our origins and become once more the
clay in His hands. Here is Mary, then, mothering not only His Son to life, but
in her example, showing His Son’s brothers and sisters how to follow Him. Be
teachable. Ask God not why me? but how will this be?
And, finally, having heard how
this will be, Mary promptly answers the call with humility. Gabriel’s final
words – nothing will be impossible with God, spoken in reference to
Elizabeth’s conceiving John the Baptist - are in fact the response to every
query about the vocations we are all offered. Nothing is impossible with God.
God, who makes manna in the desert and turns shepherds into kings, will now walk
the earth to turn the stones of our hearts into the voices of his children. Let
is be done to me according to your word, says Mary; fiat mihi secundum
verbum tuum, in the Latin of St Jerome. Fiat mihi: be it done to me.
When we say yes to the
Lord, we often seem to be saying yes to the Him only in the moment. But
what we miss is that every moment on earth gathers around the eternal moment of
God who wills us to join Him in due course in that eternal moment of His joy.
To say yes then calls forth also our thank you, calls forth our joy;
and joy itself, St Thomas Aquinas teaches us, is only one of the qualities of
love, along with peace and mercy. At the same time, these human yeses
that join His yes to us, echo also down the centuries, through all the
hearts who ever, if only for a moment, turned to God, from the lowest sinner to
the highest saint.
Mary’s yes began this
chorus of restoration in objectivity, teachability, and in humility. We only
need follow her example to see the impossible.
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