Archives
May 15, 2010
The Mysteries of Joy
The Annunciation
The Visitation
The Birth of our Lord
The Presentation in the Temple
The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple
LOVING GOD
Our Lady will give us a deeper understanding of our privilege of loving God through the five Mysteries of Joy.
”Mary, do not be afraid; you have found favor with God.”
Luke 1:30
ANOTHER day had begun in the little home of Nazareth - a quiet, cool March day. Mary would spend it as she had spent countless others, working about the house. A young teenage girl, Mary, ordinary like the rest of the villagers, like Joseph … Suddenly, an angel was by her side: “Hail, full of grace!” An ordinary person would be rather disturbed by such a visitor, and by such a greeting. And Mary was! “She was troubled at his word.” The angel had implied that Mary loved God with all her heart, soul, mind, strength; and she did.
Loving God wholeheartedly - like Mary, I was created to do just that - and being “ordinary” puts no barriers in my way!
II. THE VISITATION
”During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste … to the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”
Luke 1:39
MARY was a model human being, unselfish, heart full of affection. Jesus was now divinely conceived in her womb. We might want to stay home and love Him, love Him alone. But Mary knew this was not the way to love God: to love God alone is to love Him not at all. Of her Son’s commandment, “Love one another,” Mary’s visitation was an unconscious prophecy. Loving God requires that I love everyone else - even those I cannot like! How do I do that? Practice seeing Christ in others, and act accordingly. “What you do for others, you do to me.” Christ meant that.
III. THE BIRTH OF OUR LORD
”You will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
Luke 2:12
MARY and Joseph found accommodations in one of Bethlehem’s hillside caves. It offered some protection from the December night, nothing more. Air, heavy with moisture seeping through damp earthen walls; stifling odors of cattle; darkness made all the more emphatic by a lantern’s frail light and the smallest patch of night horizon, too low for stars - yes, there would be room here. And here, Mary, Joseph and God’s Son, Jesus.
God can be loved - wholeheartedly - anywhere. Loving God does not depend on the kind of place I’m in - it depends on the kind of person I am.
IV. THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE
”My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
Luke 1:46
WE think of Mary as a reflective woman. Her recorded words are few; when others speak, she “ponders their words in her heart.” Mary spent her life in the far corners of her soul. She spent her life being all God wanted her to be. When she does speak, Mary sings. A lark in the light of morning never sang so sweetly. “My soul magnifies the Lord! … rejoices in God! … Who is mighty, Holy is God’s name!” Mary’s love flowed out of her.
Loving God makes a heart that sings.
V. THE FINDING OF THE CHILD JESUS IN THE TEMPLE
”After three days, they found him in the Temple.”
Luke 2:46
IN three syllables, this Mystery of the Rosary reveals the very root and fibre of love for God; it tells exactly what loving God means. “They found him.” A perfect expression of our meditation’s theme. To love God is nothing else than to have found Jesus. The explanation is no less simply told: all my love for God is from Christ; the outpouring of grace upon the world is his meriting. Every spark of divine charity, the briefest and brightest in every soul in every age, has been struck to life on one Cornerstone - Christ.
Mary’s Son came into the world to look for me that I might find the Father. I find Jesus and the Father in the Sacraments, the Mass, in my neighbor. Am I watching for Jesus, wholeheartedly, as Mary was?