Today we celebrate the birthday of Mary, Mother of God, our blessed Mother! In the office for today, the second antiphon reads: "When the most holy Virgin was born, the whole world was made radiant; blessed is the branch and blessed the stem which bore such holy fruit."
The world was made radiant! Mary's "yes" brought salvation to a fallen world, a sinful world, a world that frequently, to this day, says "no" to God! Every "yes" to God's will and every "no" to God's will effects every human being on the face of the earth. When you and I cooperate with grace, we radiate the world within us, around us and beyond us. When we say "no" to God's will, we bring darkness into the world and that darkness effects, not only us, but others as well.
"Your birth, O Virgin Mother of God, proclaims joy to the whole world, for from you arose the glorious Sun of Justice, Christ our God; he freed us from the age-old curse and filled us with holiness; he destroyed death and gave us eternal life" (Antiphon for the Canticle of Zechariah).
St. Paul reminds us that God did not give us a spirit of cowardliness but of power--the power of holiness poured into us by the Holy Spirit at our baptism and confirmation and re-enforced, renewed, in our reception of every sacrament, in our sitting at the feet of our Lord as we ponder the Scriptures of old and the Scriptures of our lives. May people know by our lives that Jesus "destroyed death" and"freed us from the age-old curse" of saying "no" to God's will. With Mary, today and every day, may our lives be a resounding "yes" to the Lord.
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