JANUARY 1, 2008 Mary THEOTOKOS: NU 6:2-27; GAL 4:4-7; LUKE 2:16-21
MARY TREASURED ALL THESE THINGS AND REFLECTED ON THEM IN HER HEART. The
Spirit of God has brought us together here this morning at the beginning of the
New Year acting through Minh who has just made a perpetual vow of chastity.
Some of you may be surprised to hear that it is God’s Spirit himself who led
you here: you came consciously simply in response to an invitation from Minh,
to show support and as an expression of friendship and affection for her
person. However, as today’s Feast of Mary the Mother of God reminds us, human
events and decisions have more than one significance,
for they are many-layered. We are often conscious only of their surface
meaning, but that never exhausts their full content; it frequently happens that
the hidden significance of our acts is of far more interest and holds more
truth than what one is aware of. The most telling, the heaviest freighted
actions are not accessible to vision or touch; they are perceived only by the
senses of the heart. Real understanding takes place within the spirit where the
human person is most present to the life that stirs in the interior of one’s
consciousness.
Mary,
the Mother of Jesus, had a strong sense of this truth concerning human
experience. She grasped intuitively that there is a hidden depth in events and
above all in persons, not accessible to passing, superficial attention. She
realized this was especially the case in treating of the most personal of all
realities, one’s dealings with God. At some point in every truly relation that
is on the way to becoming deeply personal, there arises an awareness that the
other is more than what appears through her behavior, more than shows in her
physical appearance; this person is a mysterious other who in some hidden, very
real manner exists above and behind and within this physical universe. The
human person is deeper than the whole of the created world with its light years
of space. Closely upon this realization is the awareness, however fleeting,
however vague in its outlines, that this person is meant for life, life that
does not end with the death of the body. This awareness must be accepted to
persist; we must acknowledge its validity, its claim on our consent and only
then does it take on a fresh density of truth, and become a passageway into the
invisible world of the spirit. This choice is an acceptance of our true self,
created by God for himself, created in his image and made for his likeness.
This is
the world Mary moved in through the faith that she acted upon
and made the object of her reflection. Mary meditated on these things so
as to discern the presence of this hidden mystery of God. In this way she came
to dwell in the depths of her heart within this hidden world of the Spirit of
God. The presence of God to his creation and to each of his human creatures was
revealed to her with a fresh access of insight and appreciation as she became
the mother of God by assenting to receive the Son of God in her womb. This same
insight, conveyed by the Spirit God imparts to each
of those who put their trust in him and obey his word as they call upon his
name has been given to Minh. It is that leads her to consecrate herself to the
Lord for the remainder of her life. Her vow of chastity is a way of affirming
God’s gift of himself to her, of reclaiming a likeness to the one who created
her, and unites her forever to the Son of Mary who has redeemed her by his death
and resurrection. It is this sacrifice that is the essence of this mass.
Because of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus we can confidently
celebrate the mysterious life given to Minh with a fresh increment of intensity
today. This life, at once divine and human, that we commemorate at the
Eucharist is shared with all those who, in faith and by baptism belong to the
same Lord Jesus. And so we offer the mass this morning in gratitude to God for
the grace he has given to our sister, Minh, and with her to all those whose life her fidelity will touch. And along with her
may he bestow on each of us here as well, his undying love and preserve us all
always in his paternal care.
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