Mary: A Model of One Who Surrenders to God, her Savior and Lord

 Today we celebrate the Assumption of our Blessed Mother into heaven!  Mary is the Immaculate Conception, that is the one person conceived without sin, the mother of God Incarnate, Jesus, the Son of God man.  Mary, before her birth, was fully redeemed, that is without the wound of sin that we all inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve.  Mary is the new Eve, as Jesus is the new Adam. In today's second reading, Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15: 20-27, Paul reminds the Corinthians and us, that "Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through man, the resurrection of the dead came also through man. [And,] just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life...."  Mary was assumed into heaven body and soul.  Her immaculate body was not subject to corruption and did not return to dust, as ours will after we die! 

In the Collect of today's Mass, we pray:  "Almighty ever-living God, who assumed the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of your Son, body and soul into heavenly glory, grant, we pray, that, always attentive to the things that are above, we may merit to be sharers of her glory."  Mary was always attentive to the things that are above, that is, to carrying out God's will for her, nurturing, caring, supporting her son Jesus, the Incarnate God! She taught Jesus  how to surrender to God's will, as she did, when, at the Annunciation, she said: "Nothing is impossible for God; let it be done to me according to your word." And Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and the child that she was to conceive in  her womb was the Son of God, the One of whom it says in today's first reading, Revelation 11: 10ab: "Now have salvation and power come, and the Kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed One."

Jesus, like His mother, carried out the will of His Father in all things, even saying in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Not my will but yours be done," as He agonized over His impending death following Judas' betrayal of Him to his enemies.

How attentive are you, am I, to God's will as it reveals itself in the events and the people in our lives?  How aware are we that the Holy Spirit, as in the case of Mary, overshadows us and brings God's gifts to us, making us fruitful and givers of life to others?

The Word dwells among Us

“…[T]he Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only-begotten Son full of grace and truth” (Jn 1: 14).

Anywhere, any  place, in any circumstance, where love abides You are, Lord.  I may never know that  truth, if I never step off the world’s roller coaster of activity, chasing this object or that object.  Your presence is a quiet presence. Your power is a gentle power!  If I attack a situation like a bulldozer, with a demanding attitude that I am right and the other person is wrong; if I come out swinging at my “opponent,” real or imagined, I will not to attuned to God’s quiet power at work through gentleness and compassion, love, forgiveness, and understanding. Those ways of engagement, those ways of being present to others, are not God’s way.  When I am ranting and raving about the fiscal cliff, about anything, attacking one party and then another, attacking one person and then another,  I need to hear God’s declaration:  “… my thoughts are not your thoughts, ... so are my ways higher than your ways ... Isaiah 55:1.

 

Unless I stop to reflect on God’s dwelling among us and His way of bringing about our salvation (Jesus was not violent nor did he allow others to resort to violence on his behalf), I could easily go through this day and be among God’s own people who did not accept him (Jn1:11). Am I willing to humbly step back, powerlessly receive the power of a child of God (cf. Jn 1:12), not by human choice or by a human decision but by God’s choice (Jn 1:13).  Only then, like John, will I testify to the Light,  to the Word of God who dwells among us (Jn. 1:14)