Mary: A Model of Faithfulness

“Blessed is the Virgin Mary who kept the word of God and pondered it in her heart,” is the Gospel acclamation for today’s liturgy.  The grace to ponder God’s word day in and day out  and adhere to it comes to us through Mary, a model of faithful obedience to God's Word and God's Word alone. Once Paul encountered Christ, the Word of God, on the road to Damascus, his life was changed forever.  From prison, he writes to Timothy: “…the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, Jesus, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance.”

Will we be able to say at the end of our lives “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith”?  Paul warns Timothy:  “…the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will be diverted to myths.”  None of us escapes Satan deceitfulness. He has ways to divert our thinking, our longing, and our pursuit of “myths,” to untruths about Jesus and His teachings, to “myths” about the Catholic Church and its teachings as well.

O, how easy to be deceived. We are not unlike Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden:   “God caused to grow every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…..The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye and that it was enticing for the wisdom that it could give; so she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it”  (Gen.2: 9 and3:6). 

How many people are seduced into sex before marriage, into aborting their child, into selling children into slave labor, into using drugs? How many people are enticed into achieving wealth dishonestly because these activities, at the moment, are  “enticing for the wisdom that [they promise to] give!  So, too, of entering into gossip or telling lies!

What “tree”  do I perceive as “good to eat and pleasing to the eye and that it…[is] enticing for the wisdom that it could give”?  About what "myths" am I curious and which are "enticing to look at" and which are luring me into tolerating them "for the wisdom that [they promise to] give"?

O God, open my eyes before I fall into accepting and tolerating "myths" that lure me away from You and Your Truth, Your Way, and Your Life.