"It is in Our Lady that God fell in love with Humanity." Since we celebrated the Annunciation last week I have been meditating on this thought that Caryll Houselander wrote in her beautiful work, The Reed of God. "It is in Our Lady that God fell in love with Humanity." This points to so much...
Mary’s YES opened the door so that God could at last enter our lives. So that we can come to know Who God is and who we are, as the Holy Spirit wants to reveal to us in the scripture readings of today.
A couple of people have recently said to me that they "don’t like" the Old Testament, thinking that it presents a vengeful God – as they might see in the text from Exodus we have heard – but that’s a superficial interpretation!
We hear God threatens to wipe out His people! But look! God had been showing both His power and His great love for them, inviting them to a Covenant that would have changed all of Human History.
But they reject Him. Moses comes down the mountain and finds them worshiping an image of a bull. Excuse my frankness but the Hebrew version of the text indicates that they gave themselves to drunken orgiastic fertility rites like the pagans around them. Actions have their consequences - but God quickly heard the prayer of the great Prophet Moses and spared them!
Their idolatry was, in essence, insisting on doing things their way and not God’s way!
But Mary says YES.
God could finally come fully into our lives, our history in Jesus!
In Chapter 5 of John’s Gospel, from which we hear today, Jesus meets an invalid waiting for healing by the side of the pool, helplessly, for years. "Stand up, take your mat and walk," He tells him.
In Jesus we are to see God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, revealed, acting, loving, reconciling, and saving… yet the people do not want to see it.
"The Father Who sent me has Himself testified on my behalf… You refuse to come to Me and have life," Jesus says to them. Many continue wanting to do things their way and not God’s way.
Two weeks from today is Holy Thursday. We practice Lenten disciplines till then, not as some sort of self-help psychology, trying to make ourselves into some successful, beautiful, optimal, perfect re-invention of ourselves or our society.
Rather, with Mary, we recognize and open ourselves to the profound love of the One who, if we say YES to Him, will give us real life.
By His Cross and Resurrection He has redeemed the World. He is our way to healing, transformation: to a New Creation.
Let us keep preparing ourselves to stand with Mary at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday.
