Exhaling

“Ne timeas Maria invenisti enim gratiam apud Deum.” Luke 1:30 

The utter Utterance of Adonai from all eternity

Desired to utter His Word to earth in profound obscurity.

Down through long ages of prophet and king, He tended vine and shoot,

In the fullness of time preparing a womb

to bear such glorious fruit. 

Her soul like sun-splashed crystal in the shadowless noon of day,

Her eyes ever on her Master’s hand, her feet ever in His way.

Her docile heart and God’s own love beat always as if one;

Such a living flame alone could bear the heartbeat of the Son. 

The Most High sent His messenger to this humble Nazarene;

All of Heaven held its breath, looking down upon the scene:

From the house and line of David, a maiden of unprecedented grace

By her resolute, valiant, radical “yes” gave to her God a face.

We live in an age of self.

From every side, the message coming at us to put ourselves first, decide everything for ourselves (even what is morally right), pamper ourselves because we deserve it. We can control every detail of our lives – our music, our viewing, our communication, etc. are all custom-tailored for us. We must defend ourselves. We must express our individuality. We must be informed, healthy, beautiful, energetic, popular, strong, and smell right too. We can and must create our own destiny. We are like gods. We are self-sufficient and self-absorbed.

Against this self-worship, we hold Mary, perfect self-immolation.

I think of the Annunciation (which I said we would talk about a few days ago) as such a rich illustration of this perfection.

Mary was simply doing what was before her, accepting this as God’s will for her, and had effectively “taken herself out of the running” as Mother of the Messiah she was awaiting. She had some idea about how she would serve God and chose virginity. Then an angel appears to her and tells her she is “full of grace,” which causes some confusion to her absolute humility. The fact that the angel tells her not to be afraid is evidence that she was not used to seeing angels; her spiritual experience does not seem to have included visions of heavenly beings, so in that way it was like most of our own.

The angel then expresses God’s will for her:

“You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;

and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David…” (Lk 1:31-32)

He doesn’t really ASK Mary. He simply expresses God’s will for her, and waits for her consent. Now this pure maiden of 14 or 15 is not too afraid of the angel to boldly ask a question: “How can this be?” She is not asking for a scientific explanation here, we can be sure. But she, completely open to God’s will, was asking whether God’s will for her was now to include surrendering her virginity. Was she now to “know man”? The angel tells her that

“the Holy Spirit will come upon you,

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;

therefore, the child to be born will be called holy,

the Son of God.”

Now there is no doubt about what is being asked of Mary, though she could not understand this mysterious “overshadowing.” She knew Scripture well enough to understand all the references to Isaiah, etc. and to know that she, little Mary of Nazareth, humble maiden content to grind grain and carry water and serve others, was the ONE who was being called by the Almighty to be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah. And she gives the perfect answer: Fiat mihi.

“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

She accepts, embraces God’s plan without knowing all the details or trying to understand more than she is given. More importantly for our instruction perhaps, she abandons her own plan immediately. She does not raise any objections, does not try to compromise. Done.

She teaches us to be open to God’s will no matter what it may demand of us.

To encounter Christ in the way He chooses to reveal Himself, to give Himself to us.

To be content to do small things for the love of God, and yet humbly accept that God may ask us to do something great for Him, and that He can accomplish His perfect and magnificent work through small and imperfect creatures.

Mary knew more clearly than any of us that we come from God, we are returning to God, and God is rescuing and using us every step of the way. We are utterly contingent on the Creator. This is the essence of humility.

Humility is to know that at my very center, I do not find MYSELF. “I” am not the center of the universe, and not even the center of myself. We do not belong to ourselves. At our deepest center, we find the place where God can pitch His tent, if we let Him.

If we will not allow God to dwell here, this place will remain vacant and aching to be filled, and we will find ourselves trying to fill it with other “stuff” or frenetic activity or foreign ideas.

But whatever we open to Him, He fills. He invites us into His life of love, and our own identity emerges through the continual giving and letting-go that this Presence inspires and His grace makes possible.

Through her absolute surrender to the will of God, little Mary of Nazareth became Mother of the Messiah, Mother of us all, Queen of Heaven.

As I began my presentation to the Connect group:

Mary is not just a Christmas decoration.

She makes a nice prop, but we need to get past the charming representations of the Holy Family and this beautiful new mother holding this beautiful new Baby and get to the person of Mary to appreciate what God has created and given to humanity in her.

Christ gave her to us from the Cross, as Mother.

She is our Mother because He is our brother.

A lot of people are very attached to Marian devotions like the Rosary and scapular, and that is good, as far as it goes. Sometimes, we remain devoted to the devotion and we find it difficult to move on to relationship. Mary is a living person, and one who can teach us a great deal about what it means to follow Christ. Devotion to Mary must mean knowing the person and imitating her virtues.

She is like a How-to Manual for following Christ, as she was His first disciple (even though she was also His first teacher – I love Divine paradox!). If we look and listen, we can learn much about how to be fully open to God’s will and His grace, how to receive Christ, how to discover Him hidden in ordinary things, how to bear trials and suffering, how to grow toward God, how to pray always, how to love fully, how to let go of what we love for God’s sake, etc. It would be hard to narrow the Manual to a manageable volume.

We should explore these ideas in greater detail. But first, we need to remember that, although we are talking about Mary and focusing on her, she can never eclipse Christ. She always tells us to “Do whatever HE tells you.” She always points to Him. She is only full of Him, so if we give ourselves to her, we are His. She only wants the salvation of all her children, and our salvation is not in her, it is in HIM – she will not upset the order of the universe by failing to give all to Christ, or misdirecting our efforts or prayers. No mother would do that.

At the center of the universe, two HUMAN hearts beat in unison and point to one another. If we love Christ, if we have the heart of Christ, we love Mary as mother. We are safe in loving her, because we only love her because Christ does, and for what He did in and through her. Without Him, she is nothing. But because of Him, she is universal Mother, given to us as gift; given to us as a kind of final “bequeathal” with His last anguished breaths.

And a gift should be fully received.

Aramaic is a “poor” language, in comparison to, say, classical Greek, I heard Fr. Mitch Pacwa say. Isn’t it fitting that the Lord would choose to be born into absolute poverty, and that even the language in which He would communicate the Good News would be somewhat impoverished? His actual poverty, His spiritual poverty, and His “intellectual” poverty, show His absolute independence from all that the world deems necessary and important.

I bring this up because I want to talk about the Annunciation, and there is an interesting twist here. Only the Gospel of Luke includes this story, as well as the birth and infancy of both John the Baptist and Jesus. The other Gospel writers pick up the story a bit later (well, Matthew includes the Nativity, but not the Annunciation or Visitation… or the Finding in the Temple). So, if we want to know about the beginning, we have to turn to Luke.

Now Luke was a physician, and his Gospel is written in a beautiful and very educated Greek. But the birth and infancy narratives differ in style from the rest of the Gospel, which is curious. Unless you are a linguist and you find that this part of the story seems to translate word-for-word directly from Aramaic to Greek.

Bible scholar I am not, so I’m taking others’ word for this, but it’s interesting to think that this might be explained by the fact that he heard the story from Mary herself, who would be the one to know the details of something that no other earthly creature had witnessed. And she spoke Aramaic. I find this explanation supported by two other facts: the other Gospels do not include this part of the story, and Luke himself says that he interviewed eyewitnesses to the events. To my mind, he is discreetly suggesting that he spoke with Mary herself; she, I am sure, did not want to be named.

To contemplate the face of Christ, and to contemplate it with Mary, is the “programme” which I have set before the Church at the dawn of the third millennium, summoning her to put out into the deep on the sea of history with the enthusiasm of the new evangelization.          ~John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia

Yes, that is what we are doing during this month of May – contemplating Christ with Mary, studying Mary to see how Christ lives in and through her, to see how He is magnified by her pure soul, to see how He shines through her.

I was asked to talk to a group of younger people the other night (a very Spirited group of twentysomethings with whom I enjoy sharing, even though I tend to fill up my entire time talking – mea culpa!) and when asked for a title for my talk, I shot a look to the crucifix in my office and blurted out, “How about “the Meaning of Mary for the Third Millennium”? Ha. Bit off more than I could chew.

 But.

I think I made a good start. I’d like to expand some of those thoughts (though those who heard what I said may be wishing I’d do the opposite!).

Someone I consider to be very “in touch” with the Spirit keeps asking me when I will publish another book. The other day, he said to me (inspiration?), “You’re already writing it. You just don’t know it yet.” The strange thing is that my spiritual director had just said basically the same thing, and I have had the persistent sense that I should write something about Mary. When another priest friend read something I had written about Mary recently he said, “That sounds like a whole chapter right there.” So, perhaps that is what is brewing. Only God knows.

Meanwhile, I’ll share my thoughts here. As usual.

As soon as I find a full minute. Forgive my abruptness, but the family calls.

Mary had, for all practical purposes, taken herself “out of the running” for the position of “Mother of the Messiah.” She would not know man, and therefore could not conceive the Christ. She would be God’s alone, and would pray and wait with the rest of the Chosen People for His mysterious coming.

She is humbly content with her daily chores, the pauses for formal prayer, the constant prayer within her soul. Then an angel appears and says, “Fear not.” This tells us that Mary was not familiar with the sight of angels. The angel presents God’s will for her, but does not command. Nothing happens immediately. God waits for her consent.

She will consent, of course, because she has always said YES, but first she asks a question: “How can this be?” She was not asking for a scientific explanation of how this would take place, but rather wondering perhaps if God was calling her to something new – Did God now want her to be other than virgin?

The angel satisfies her with his explanations of the overshadowing Spirit. So Mary’s pure, grace-filled soul opens fully to this new manifestation of His will for her and for all humanity. And Mary, in some way ecstatically overshadowed by the Spirit of God, surrenders herself and every previous idea about her service to Him, and with every fiber of her being, with her entire body and soul, she participates in the enfleshment of His Thought. His Will, His Thought, His Idea, His Word, is all ONE; this one Idea ignites her soul and she burns with the very Love of God, and in this Flame she opens her heart fully with eagerness to do His will. In this fire of Love, the very Word of God – eternal, infinite, unspeakable, all-powerful – enters creation and begins to offer in space and time the Sacrifice of Himself.

 Today salvation begins to be realized, through Mary’s FIAT.

Every burden we bear, every suffering we endure, Christ has borne before us and bears with us. But we sometimes forget that Mary has suffered before us as well, and knows human heartache. This Mother, given to us by Christ, suffered confusion and hardship, walked the road to Calvary with Him, and was martyred in spirit as the spear pierced His cooling Heart. The glorious white martyrdom of Mary, foretold by Simeon. 

These words should not seem strong to us – any mother who has watched a child suffer knows how keenly that child’s suffering is felt, how vehemently a mother desires to bear every pain in place of that child. This kind of “suffering with” opens us more deeply to the suffering of others. We sympathize with every soul, we want to relieve every suffering, we yearn to help everyone we can. Mary’s uniquely profound sacrifice – a complete oblation offered in complete union with Christ in a way that only her pure Mother’s heart, beating always in union with His, could offer – opened her Immaculate Heart to the suffering of all and allowed her to accept the universal Motherhood Christ offered her from the Cross.

Mother of all, a Mother sorrowing with and sorrowing for her children, a Mother who knows the wages of sin and wants all to avail themselves of the spiritual freedom her Son won for all. She knows that we have each been bought with His Blood, which He (and she) offered willingly to the Father in the spirit of generous obedience – two perfect YESes echoing eternally. 

As Christ gave her as Mother of all, we need not hesitate to consider ourselves her true children. If we are hers, then we are HIS; her soul is filled only with HIM, her desire is only that we are also filled with HIM so that we are transformed into HIM – one Body with Christ as Head. The Queen does not reign without the KING. These are united Hearts – two human Hearts beating with divine love, eager to reign within us. 

I cannot claim to understand this theologically or philosophically. I only know that a wholly Christocentric heart loves Mary, and a Marian heart can only love CHRIST above all. At the very heart of the universe, two hearts beat in unison and point to one another. Whatever we entrust to Mary, she delivers directly to Him. Whatever we ask of Mary, she secures from Him. She has nothing of her own but what God gives her – but He loves her so much, He gives her everything she asks for. 

So as the Church focuses our attention during this month on Mary, we need not fear that we give her too much attention or Christ too little. She will not allow the order of the universe to be upset. Christ is all in all, Christ without beginning or end, Christ the same yesterday, today, forever. Mary will never tell us anything other than, “Do whatever He tells you.”  (Jn 2:5)