On this first day of the new year, the Church focuses our attention on Mary, the Mother of God. Why is this? As our Sunday meditation told us, the spiritual life is a continual interplay of God’s action and our response. God is always acting to bring us into union with himself, but for his action to bear fruit and achieve its end, we must make a fitting response to him. Mary, the Mother of God, is the perfect model of humanity’s response to God’s saving action. This is why the Church holds up Mary to us as we begin the year.
We see clearly in the first reading that God wants to bless his people. He wants to “shine his face upon [us] and be gracious to [us].” He looks upon us kindly and gives us peace. This is the kind of God we have. We should reject any ideas which we might have picked up over the years of God as an angry judge, keeping track of our sins and waiting to punish us for our failings. He wants to bless us! This is why he came to us in Jesus Christ. In the Psalm we pray that God will “bless us in his mercy.” His mercy is precisely his forgiveness and healing of our sins, so we should never be afraid to admit our sin to him and ask him for forgiveness and healing. He wants to bless us in his mercy.
This is God’s action – to bless us. We make it possible for his blessing to take effect when we respond to him as Mary did. As we were told yesterday, this means we give our “yes” to God with full hearts and minds. “Yes” to his word and his work in us; “No” to the lies, to sin, and to the seductions of the world.
We recall that, in the beginning, Eve said “yes” to the liar who told her that God and his ways were holding her back from her true fulfillment. By accepting the lie and acting upon it, thereby rejecting the word of God, she brought down tragic consequences on herself, Adam, and all their descendants. Mary, on the other hand, is the New Eve, who rejected completely the word of the liar, and said her full and total “yes” to the word of God. She chose to believe God’s word rather than the word of the Evil One. As Elizabeth said to her at the Visitation, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:45).
God’s word has the power to accomplish what it says. If God says, “You will conceive and bear a son,” then that is exactly what can and will happen if the person receiving that word accepts it with faith and acts to cooperate with God. On the other hand, we have the freedom to say “no” to God, and then his word cannot accomplish fully what it means to do in us. Our “yes” or “no” to God is no small matter!
The second reading tells us that God has a plan, and it comes about in “the fullness of time.” And we see what the plan of God is – he means to make us his own sons and daughters by adoption, by the power of the Spirit working in our hearts, so that we can truly call upon him as our “Abba, Father.” God has said that he means to do this in us. What is our response to his word? Yes or no?
Looking at Mary, we can see what God is able to do when he receives a full “yes” in response to his word. St. Maximilian Kolbe said this about Mary and her relationship with the Holy Spirit: “The third Person of the Blessed Trinity never took flesh; still, our human word ‘spouse’ is far too weak to express the reality of the relationship between the Immaculata and the Holy Spirit. We can affirm that she is, in a certain sense, the ‘incarnation’ of the Holy Spirit.” (Manteau-Bonamy, H.M. Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit. Franciscan Marytown Press, 1977. p. 50.) What an astounding statement: Mary’s “yes” to God was so full and complete that the Spirit was able to, in a sense, become “incarnate” in her! This is what God wants to do in us, to “take flesh” in the world, to be present in the world in our flesh!
St. Paul tells us that the Spirit cries out in our hearts to the Father. And so, as we were urged in Sunday’s meditation, this is a good time to quiet our minds and hearts, curtailing our own words and thoughts as we pray, and sit before the infant Jesus and his Mother Mary today, allowing the Spirit to pray in us.
We are told in today’s Gospel that “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” This is a good description of what we are trying to do as we come before the Lord each morning, reflecting on the readings of the day’s Liturgy. We ponder the events of Jesus’ life in our hearts, asking him to help us by the power of his Spirit to more and more say “yes” to his word and work in us, and “no” to the word and works of the liar. We, too, are the children of Mary. Let us remain close to her, asking her to help us to believe that what the Lord says to us will be fulfilled.
What areas of my life reveal a hesitation to give a full “yes” to God’s word and action? How can I follow Mary’s example more completely? How can I make room in my heart today for the Holy Spirit to dwell and act more powerfully within me?
Excerpt from The Anawim Way, Volume 22, no. 1. More information about The Anawim Way may be found here.