First Sunday of Advent
Father Richard describes Mary as a model of faith:
In the Gospels, the Book of Acts, and throughout the Epistles, a whole new dimension of faith becomes available to those who accept it. It’s a way of living in the Spirit, which some of the Hebrew prophets anticipate. The prophet Joel speaks of this most clearly:
In the days that follow, I will pour out my spirit on everyone. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions. In those days I will pour out my spirit even on your servants and your handmaids (Joel 3:1–2).
We see the Spirit descending upon Jesus after his baptism in the Jordan, and we see the Spirit again filling the apostles with power on the day of Pentecost. But the very first person who incarnates this new faith was Mary of Nazareth, who said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me” (Luke 1:38). It was Mary who responded with an unconditional yes to the angel’s announcement that she was to give birth to the Messiah. Mary is the model of the faith to which God calls all of us: a total and unreserved yes to God’s request to be present in and to the world through us.
God desires to love others unconditionally in and through us. Those who live with such a faith can truly be called God’s instruments. God wants light to shine through us, and so our first response to this call is simply to heed it and remain open to divine grace, so that God might shine. Mary understood this completely. She said her yes to God, and God was able to become incarnate in her. She gave birth to Jesus by being so totally open to God’s Spirit that the Christ child could be born. [1]
The soul does not proceed by contraction but by expansion. It moves forward, not by exclusion, but by inclusion. It sees things deeply and broadly, not by saying no, but by saying yes, at least on some level, to whatever comes its way. If we are paying attention, we can feel those two very different movements within ourselves. Don’t take my word for it; we must experience it for and within ourselves, or we will never be able to move beyond it.
Mary’s kind of yes doesn’t come easily to us. It always requires that we let down some of our ego boundaries, and none of us likes to do that. Mary’s kind of yes, as it is presented in the Gospel, is an assent utterly unprepared for, with no preconditions of worthiness required, that is calmly, wonderfully trustful that someone else is in charge. All she asks is one, simple, clarifying question (Luke 1:34). It’s a yes that is pure in motivation, open-ended in intent, and calm in confidence. Only grace can achieve such freedom in the soul, heart, or mind. [2]
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos, The Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1987), 125–126.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press, 2014), 67.
Image credit and inspiration: Pranish Shrestha, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Not knowing what comes next yet still saying yes is courage rooted in a framework beyond the practical—like Mary holding the small light of her yes in the midst of a dark night.
Story from Our Community:
“An Advent Poem”: In the darkness before dawn, the yearning heart lies waiting. / Not asleep. / The dark night speaks of emptiness. Of solitude. / Waiting for He who is to come. / For nine months, the Lady waits, wondering…. / Each moment pregnant with unknown possibilities. / We wait, wondering, yearning. / The Sun rises, incrementally. The Child grows, day by day. / Slowly, oh so very slowly, that which is hidden becomes more clear…. / The way before us opens up…. / To the Presence in which we, all unknowing, are immersed. / We step forth now, in increasing radiance, no longer quite as blind.
—Christina V.
