Exhaling

In these days between Ascension and Pentecost, we gather near Mary like the Apostles, and find comfort in her presence when Christ seems absent.

We ask her to pray with us for the coming of the Holy Spirit upon each of us. Surely, the Spirit will respond generously to her intercession!

We ask her to teach us how to allow the Spirit to pray within us, to teach us how to calmly bring every power of our souls under the guidance of the Holy Spirit’s light and love, so that our own prayer may be a proper offering before the Throne of Love and Mercy.

Let us wait with Mary, so that our waiting will not be vacant.

If we know that the sacrifice of the Mass is the same as the sacrifice of Calvary, how can we forget Mary? She remains united to that sacrifice, united to Christ as He offers Himself on the altar; she still wills this sacrifice, as Christ does; her own immlation was an integral part of the sacrifice of the Cross, and it must remain so, as He remains her Son.

As we pray at Mass in her presence, every prayer can become clearer and more focused. Seeing God through her pure eyes, I confess my sinfulness and ask for mercy in the Confiteor. With the Mother who composed the Magnificat, I too glorify God with all my being in the Gloria. With the first follower of the Word, I listen to the Word with new attentiveness. With she who was proclaimed blessed for having believed, I declare my faith in the Creed.

At the Offertory, I ask her to offer me to the Father along with her Son - like the presentation of the Child in the Temple, the Offertory is the presentation (by the Mother)of the future Victim, and we are all brothers and sisters, and part of that Sacrifice. I want to be, like Mary, a drop of water “lost” in the wine that will be transubstantiated into His Blood; His Blood shed for all, just as our lives should be poured out for others.

At the Consecration, Body and Blood mysteriously separated, I remain with Mary at the foot of the Cross, as she offers her Son, and herself in union with Him. I am there with John and Mary Magdalen (purity and reparation, both fueled by love), and Jesus offers Himself to the Father, joining all of us to that offering. There is only ONE Sacrifice. We are all there, united to Him, offered through Him, with Him, in Him.

I cannot imagine a Communion without Mary, as I have been asking her to “replace my poor and sinful heart” with her “holy and immaculate Heart, that I may worthily receive and serve” her Son for as long as I can remember. It seems that she accompanies me to the altar, reminding me that “the Bridegroom has come; let us go to welcome Him,” guides me as I receive Him and am received by Him, and remains near me as I pray.

And as we are dismissed to bring Christ to others, I walk with Mary who was the first to do precisely that, from the first moment of His conception; she was always “Christ-bearer,” who brought His light to others, never keeping it for herself.

What is wrong with a society in which its teens choose to look like starved sewer rats? It has lost its vision.

In a civilization in which we can control every facet of our lives, demand to be treated like Louis XIV, and explain everything scientifically or think we will be able to soon, we do not need God. When we do not worship God (“everybody’s worshipping something”), we worship ourselves and our stuff. And the fruit of self-worship is self-loathing. We cannot be fulfilled within ourselves, so we begin to destroy ourselves. And we become skeptical of everything beautiful, good, and true, which eventually leads to despair.

In contrast, Mary teaches us the correct attitude toward God, toward others, and toward society. First, as we pointed out in discussing the Annunciation, she shows us that we should have complete faith and trust in the Father who loves us personally. God is real, God is present, God is loving. God loves us each personally. She was able to say YES though she could not see the details of the future. But she trusted that God would take care of all the details perfectly. 

Then, she went “in haste” to help Elizabeth. There was no sitting around glorying in her own little moment (“little”?!). The Mother of God does not see that she should now have any special consideration or that others should be helping her, though she might. Instead, she goes “in haste” to serve (charity is always in a hurry, not a fluster). When she arrives and the reality of what God has done in her is confirmed by Elizabeth’s greeting, Mary acknowledges what God has done for her and then immediately returns all the glory to Him. She teaches us to take Christ to the streets in concrete acts of charity, animated by the love of Christ within us, and to give all glory to Him (“Non nisi, Domine…”). 

Finally, Mary was living in politically and religiously controversial times (much like our own in many ways). How did she respond to the issues of the day? Well, she did not become an activist (though she was raising the most revolutionary individual in the history of humanity), did not fight fire with fire, did not join the resistance, as they say. She didn’t dress up like a jester, break into the Roman barracks and spray paint peace messages on their spears. She simply did what was before her, and prayed, moving hearts one at a time in the direction of peace. 

Don’t get me wrong here: there is a time and a place for resistance and we absolutely – ABSOLUTELY – have an obligation to defend the truth. We must use the means available to us (and this varies for each individual) to protect the powerless, using the strength of our bodies to help those who are weak, the powers of our minds to advance all good, whatever material power or authority we have to defend the truth, the powers of our hearts to bring hope to the suffering and sorrowful. We absolutely must speak out (and sometimes act) against injustice and evil at every level. In our time, this especially means that we must make our voices heard (through writing, newspaper, speaking, protesting, silent witness, whatever) and make the truth known about abortion, war, euthanasia, poverty, economic injustice and more. We must. We MUST. With whatever voice God has given us, we must. 

The lesson we learn from Mary is that prayer is more powerful than action, though both are necessary; it’s just that we can’t get so caught up in our action that we forget that it would be powerless without prayer. Action must be preceded by prayer, accompanied by prayer, followed up with prayer. It must spring from prayer, remain enshrouded in prayer, and we must pray for the souls we are trying to move long after our activity has come to rest. 

So against the skepticism, despair, and egoism of the day, we look to Mary to learn the way of faith, hope, self-giving, humility, and confident trust in the love of God. In this is our peace, and peace can only come from within.

To be fully alive, we must have a “setting.”  We do not exist as personalities in our bodies alone; our personality is expressed and fulfilled through its extensions: creative work, relationships, home, family, traditions, culture. Our “stuff” is part of our self-expression.

But “stuff” can enslave. The things that compose our setting can become (deliberately or unconsciously) an encircling wall rather than an enlargement of personality. This is why the Church (wise with the Wisdom of the Spirit) upholds the right to property while preaching the virtue and value of poverty of spirit.

We are to be detached from things, though things are necessary. This detachment means not clinging to the good things God gives us to use as well as not running from the bad things that come our way. The goal is true poverty of spirit, not because “stuff” is bad but because true freedom is only to be had by those who are poor in spirit.

The poverty of the Holy Family is their complete independence from all that the world considers valuable and important. They had nothing. What little they were given, they accepted with gratitude. When they were asked to surrender it, they did so willingly and joyously. I think of the immediate flight into Egypt at the prompting of an angel. They were ready to let go of everything, even a sense of place, a sense of belonging, and flee to a foreign (and pagan) land, without questions, in the middle of the night. True poverty of spirit.

Most of us are not called to give everything away and live on charity – we are all spiritual mendicants, not actual ones! But it isn’t the occasional dramatic renunciations God looks for, but daily attention to His will in little things. If we are detached from things, detached even from our own ideas about how things will go, we can let go without despair or resentment, accepting all as the will of God.

We can maintain this detachment by remembering to be grateful each day for all that we have, accepting what is not good out of love and obedience. Then we begin to see things in His light, to discern His will in all things.

Every evening, we should thank Him for the gift of our life, for every gift of nature and grace, every situation and circumstance in our lives, every person He has placed in our lives. And then we should surrender all back to Him.

Blessed are they who are poor in spirit; theirs is the Kingdom of God.

“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.