Blessed rather .... those who hear ... and obey

Our Lady of the Southern Cross - Paul Newton

      Today's Gospel reading at Mass was taken from Luke 11:27-28

While Jesus was speaking to the people, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him,

"Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!" 

      As I heard these words proclaimed I could picture Jesus sitting among the group of disciples and touched by the spontaneous words of a loving mother in the crowd, a woman like Mary, His Mother. 

      Those words evoked in Jesus very intimate thoughts of His Mother and everything that she had done and been for Him ....  Blessed indeed!! ... like every mother!

      But immediately His memory brought Him the images of Mary He cherished most and He knew best; images of Mary like no other mother, like no other woman or man - Mary the First Disciple, the faithful little one of YHWH, the daughter of His Father, the Jewish woman who taught Him, with words, but much more so with her own life, what to be the Son of God in a human body was like ...

      And thinking of this most treasured image of Mary, Jesus responded to the woman in the crowd:

"Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!"

      This beautiful example of Jesus' love for His Mother speaks also of Jesus priorities so well set in place. The Father is always first. Everything else flows from this first priority and is ordained towards it. Mary lived in this way every day of her life, and this was what Jesus treasured most in her: her faithfulness to the Father, her fidelity to her personal call.

      This is also what Jesus invites and treasures most in everyone of us, our faithfulness and fidelity to our own personal call. We all have a unique role to live out, an irrepeatable image of God to express with our uniqueness. We cannot discern, discover, and live our unique individual call without setting time and dedication in our daily life for prayer and reflection. We need special times and places to get in touch with our own deepest desire, which matches God's Desire for us. We need again prayer and dedication to be able to overcome our busy-ness and distraction, our fears and compulsions, and to respond with our life in action to the stirrings and invitation of Grace towards a fulfilled and genuinely Christian -Christ like- life, the life that can truly make us genuinely joyful and alive even in the midst of difficulties and suffering.


      We can hear the Word of God in the intimacy of our prayer space or, in a privileged way, in the celebration of the Eucharist where we can be fed -daily- with Jesus Himself at the table of the Word and at the Eucharistic table. We may drink sometimes from the prolongation of Jesus' Paschal Sacrifice at the altar of an Adoration Chapel. We can grow in our faith and love for the Word by praying the Rosary at home with our family or while driving to and from some errand or work. We may read the Word from the Book of Nature during a quiet walk among the beauty of the fall season, or from our preferred spiritual author.

      We can always turn to Mary, the model of discipleship that Jesus displays today before us. She is the powerful intercessor and caring mother always ready to help us in our struggles to give birth with deeds and actions those gentle insights that the Spirit of Jesus graces us with when we feel more devoted or even when we are most distracted.

      May she teach us to listen to the Word of God -and to obey it- with the totality of response and commitment that was her joy and Jesus' delight.

     

Immaculate Heart of Mary

After the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus we celebrate Mary's Immaculate Heart. The gospel for this feast is the episode of Young Jesus remaining in the Temple of Jerusalem without telling anything to his parents, Mary and Joseph (Lk 2:41-51).

Here we have the perfect family of the Son of God Incarnate, and this passage shows us that they had the same difficulties of every family: misunderstandings, stress, anxiety ... and a teenager doing his "thing". By the way, Jesus doesn't hesitate to correct his Mother as to who his real Father is. Doesn't He sound like any family with a teenager on board?

The circumstances were so trying that the gospel concludes:

"Jesus' Mother pondered all these things in her heart."

Mary met here, probably for the first time, a Jesus she didn't know yet: the obedient Jesus who had a mind of his own as to Who he would ultimately obey.

Jesus was already attuned with the Inner Voice but this visit to the magnificent Temple of Jerusalem, a first as a young adult Jew, was a very special experience. He got in touch with his calling and his sense of identity in such a powerful way that everything else dropped off his attention, including his parents. Jesus had to respond to that experience and did so by probing his insights in conversation with the teachers of Israel and breaking with the expectations of behavior of a good son.

But then, as it always happens with authentic experiences of encounter with God, Jesus went down to the ordinary and was obedient to Joseph and Mary. He was free to "disobey" them for a greater obedience, but he was free also to obey them again afterwards in humble alignment with the ordinary.

This is no small lesson on freedom and obedience which, with Mary, we too are invited to ponder in our heart in order to be able to live our lives and make decisions with mature fidelity to God first, and then to our elders, in the different aspects of life. Let us ask Mary for the wisdom she learned from Jesus as she was teaching him to live as a human son of God.