‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believes that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’ Luke: 1:39-45
The news that her cousin Elizabeth was already in her sixth month of pregnancy was announced by the angel as proof that to God nothing is impossible. Upon hearing it, however, Mary made no further comment but kept it in her heart, and as soon as her encounter with God’s messenger was over, she left for Ein Karen, a village about 145 km from Nazareth where her cousin lived. The trip was made by caravan, in the company of other travelers, which must have taken between 7 to 10 days.
From the encounter with the angel and the words of Elizabeth to Mary, the first half of the prayer much loved and recited by Catholics is formulated – the Hail Mary prayer. This first part is composed of the words of the angel, followed by the words of Elizabeth and ends with Jesus who is the center of this prayer, as he has always been the center of Mary's life.
The second part of the prayer reflects what Mary is to each of us individually and her role in the Salvation History of the human race as a whole. That is why we ask her to pray to God for us "now", in the every "now(s)" of our lives and especially in that ultimate "now" of our passage from this world to the Father. As she stood at the foot of her son's cross in his passion, so she accompanies us in ours.
Annunciation/Visitation
There is a dialectic between the angel’s annunciation to Our Lady and Our Lady’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth, which makes these two mysteries both joyful and Marian, inseparable from each other, that is, they cannot and should not be understood individually, but always in relation to each other.
In these two mysteries and in what they can mean and evoke, the entire life of a Christian is reflected, that is, they synthesize in themselves the life of a Christian. That is why Mary is for us a model of Christian life; in fact, she was not only the mother of the Lord, but she was also his disciple -- mother because she was a disciple, disciple because she was the mother (Luke 8:21). So, therefore:
If the Annunciation evokes the "Ora", the prayer, then the Visitation evokes the "Labora", the practice of good works
One day, a great king visited his spiritual master and asked him, "How can I attain Union with God? I want you to answer me in one sentence, because I'm a very busy man." The master said to him, “I can answer you with just one word." "What is the word?" asked the king. "Silence, " replied the spiritual master. "And how can I achieve silence"? "Through prayer." "And what is prayer?" "It's silence, " replied the master.
In the silence I find myself within me and I find God within the depth of my being. In the clatter I lose myself and I lose to God. The prodigal son did what he did because he went about divorced from himself but when he came to his senses, he went back to God; therefore, being with God implies being with oneself and vice versa. Whoever is outside of himself is outside of God. Because, as St. Augustine said, "Deus interior intimo meo". God is deeper than my innermost self, He is beyond my inmost self, that is, I cannot reach God without going pass myself.
The "know yourself" philosophy of Socrates is not possible without prayer. Without a time dedicated to prayer, as Mary and her son did, we do not get to know our talents, our virtues, and our flaws and limitations. A life that is not self-reflective, as Socrates also said, is not worth living. For it is in self-awareness that we can exercise control over our impulses and bad instincts. Without self-awareness, there is no self-control.
The Gospels often present Jesus, especially in the decisive moments, withdrawing alone to a place far from the crowds and his own disciples, in order to pray in silence and to live out his filial relationship with God. Silence is able to carve out an inner space within ourselves, as Pope Benedict XVI said, for God to live in it so that his Word may remain in us, and our love for him may take root in our minds and hearts so to animate our lives.
Therefore, the first step is to relearn silence, the openness to listening, which opens us to the above, to the Word of God. As Karl Rahner, the great 20th century Jesuit theologian, pointed out: the Christians of the future are either mystics or they are not Christians.
People used to say that the life of a Christian takes place between the Church as the temple and the square or marketplace. In the temple, the Christian is in prayer and contemplation of God and of himself; in the marketplace, the Christian is living out his faith in charity and love of neighbour. Even contemplative monks who devote much time in prayer "Orat", also devote much work to God, "Laborat".
Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labour we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you.
This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right. 2Thessalonians 3: 6-13
For St. Paul, there are no professionals of prayer or of proclaiming the Gospel. This must be the job of everyone. He himself, as the text states, worked and earned his living as a tent maker; he lived neither at the expense of prayer nor of evangelization. He lived therefore contrary to the traditional division of social classes in the Middle Ages, in which the clergy prayed, the nobles protected the people, and the people worked to support the clergy and the nobles. Even during the Middle Ages, those who were very dedicated to prayer like the Benedictine and Cistercian monks, were already working not only for their own sustenance, but also for the sustenance of the neighbouring villagers, to which they taught agricultural practices.
If the Annunciation evokes "loving God above all things" then the Visitation evokes "loving one's neighbour as oneself"
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when your rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the time was coming when God will be worshipped neither on Mount Gerizim where Jacob had built a Bethel shrine, nor in Jerusalem where Solomon had built the temple. God is to be worshipped in spirit and truth. And elsewhere in scripture, Jesus even says that anyone who wants to pray, is to go to his room. In prayer we exercise our love for God. It is true that we love him at all times, but prayer is the manifestation of this love that we feel at all times.
To all intents and purposes, the Creator always knows more about the creature than the creature knows about himself. Also, the Creator loves the creature more than the creature loves himself. The Creator knows everything about the creature, his past, present and future, therefore better than the creature, God can defend the creature’s interests.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matthew 10:37
All the creature can and must do is to surrender himself into the hands of the Creator, just as a toddler without any hesitation throws himself into arms of his father. Thus, we can understand this classic text of love of God, which is the creed, that every Jew recites when he wakes up in the morning. Love of God is above all things, above all people, total and absolutely exclusive, and above the love we have for ourselves.
God only loves those who love him
When you enter the home, give it your blessing. If it turns out to be a worthy home, let your blessing stand; if it is not, take back the blessing. Matthew 10: 12-13
Often in sermons, to get the attention of those who are half asleep, I throw a grenade in the middle of the audience by saying, "God loves only those who love Him." Then those in the audience who consider themselves theologians object and say no, that God loves everyone equally, and even quote the Bible to me, that He makes the rain fall on the just as well as the unjust.
And it is true that in theory God loved Hitler as well as Francis of Assisi. However, the lives of these two men could not have been more different; if the two had the same quantity and quality of God's love, why were they so distinct? That is because Francis accepted God's love, he echoed it by loving God back; Hitler did not. The sun, before reaching our planet and warming and illuminating it, passes through the outer space where the temperature is minus 300 degrees Celsius. Why? Because it is empty, there is nothing in it that echoes and touches that light and that heat. The only way to echo God's love is to love him back.
"Love is paid with love" – As scripture says, God loved us first and he always loves us, but if I do not echo His love in me, it is as if He does not love me. Only with love can we echo God's love in us. To love, either we respond with love or we are indifferent to love. Therefore, although in theory God loves everyone equally, only the ones who accept this love, only those who are open to God's love, feel the effects of this love. The act of accepting God's love, of being open to God's love, is loving God.
As the scripture reading quoted above (Matthew 10: 12-13) suggest, the blessing bounces back to you when it is not well received. So it is with the love of God that does not encounter a heart to receive and acknowledge Hi s love.
To Love and to be Loved
To love and to be loved is the first human need, after physical ones. There is no human life without love; to live is to love. All our life we will have this need. Therefore, because it is a human need and because there is no authentic human life without love, to love is both a duty and a right.
As a need, it is inherent in human nature and in the dignity of the human person; all human beings have the right to be loved and the duty to love. As children, the priority is to be loved, for it is by being loved unconditionally that we learn to love unconditionally. As adults, the priority is to love; if an adult has as priority to be loved more than to love, he is not a mature adult. He is one of those types of adults that we see in soap operas, who use a thousand and one tricks to gain someone's esteem and do little or nothing to love someone.
At the educational level, love is a duty of adults toward children, an inherent and innate right of children in relation to adults. Outside the educational sphere, the need to love and be loved remains for the rest of one’s life, so it is always both a right, even if we do not claim it, and a duty, even if we do not exercise it.
But God will continue to ask us "where is your brother?" (Genesis 4:9). To answer that we are not our brother's keeper is not an answer that satisfies God or our conscience. It is also worth remembering that what matters at the Last Judgment is the same as what matters in life: love. If you have loved then you have lived; If you did not love then you did not live, you were a living dead, that is, the body was alive, but the soul was already dead. With the death of the body, you return to the nothing from which God created you to make something out of you; but you did not collaborate with His grace.
Conclusion: If in the Annunciation Mary manifests her love for God, then in the Visitation to her cousin she manifests her love of neighbour. In these two Joyful and Marian mysteries, the life of a Christian is summarized.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
To Live is to Love🌹
ReplyDeleteThank you Father Jorge🌹