January, 20, 2013
How serious am I in
suggesting that the mother of Jesus should be the model for us sophisticated
Christians of the 80s?
How serious am I? Dead
serious.
Simply because the
pith and marrow of your Christian existence and mine is summed up in the single
sentence of Mary to the servants at Cana:
"Do whatever he
tells you"
This, we have seen,
was the secret, the driving force, of Mary's existence, from Nazareth to
Calvary and beyond.
She listened to God's
word and did it.
You see, Mary is not our
model because she tells us how to bring a child into the world without
obstetrician or midwife.
She does not show us
how to escape from tyrannical kings and terrorists.
She does not instruct
you in "the joy of cooking," does not replace Dr. Spock,
has no word for you on
domestic dialogue, neat hints on teen-age drug abuse.
In fact, if you carry
that sort of detailed, minute modeling far enough, Mary will end up the perfect
model only for the mother of a single child, and that without benefit of
husband!
When I say that what
Mary is, the Church and every Christian should be, I am reflecting a rich
tradition:
By God's providence
and with God's grace, the mother of Jesus lived to human perfection what God
intends for each of us and for the whole Christian community-
what God demands of
each and all, under peril of being unchristian.
And what is that?
Simply, that when we
hear the word of the Lord, we say yes; that we listen with ears aquiver to
Jesus' every whisper-listen and then "do whatever he tells" us.
A simple set of
monosyllables, right?
Hear the word of God
and do it.
Simple in sound,
terribly difficult in brute reality.
Oh, it's easy enough
when God's word is our word, when you hear what you hoped to hear, when what
God wants is what you would have chosen anyway.
It's relatively easy
when things are going your way, the
Michelob is flowing freely;
when there is sap in our veins and a spring in
our step;
when our love life is sheer romance and our
Honda is purring;
when our job is joy, wife or husband a daily
miracle, our children
shaped by angels, and
money grows on trees; when death has taken a holiday.
The problem is, no
human life remains quite that idyllic.
And so, Christian
existence calls for the faith of Mary, her trust, her love.
What complicates
matters, what makes faith crucial early on, is that, with as with the mother of Jesus, God does not
greet us with a curriculum vitae, with a life script, at birth, or when we turn
into a teen, or when we shake the dust of Duke from your feet.
Let me turn a little
personal.
When God called me to
be a priest (at least I think I can blame it on God), He did not unfold a full
scenario for my century, did not detail the bittersweet of priestly existence.
that, as the world around me grew and changed,
I would experience confusion and uncertainty, surprises and crosses, anger and
fear and resentment.
No angel announced to
me in advance that basic presuppositions of my youth would have to be
agonizingly reappraised on authority in the Church,
on contraception and
natural law,
on loyalty to Rome and
the freedom of the Christian conscience,
on "one true
Church."
When He called, God
told me only enough for me to say yes, only enough for me to put my hand in His
and murmur with the mother of His Son "Let it be with me as you say."
And so must it be with
all of us- if our living is to be genuinely Christian.
For some of you, what
the Lord would like from your life is reasonably clear;
for others, His word
is still to be spoken.
either case you need
the loving faith of 'a teen-age virgin of ancient Nazareth.
For, wherever the
years take you, whithersoever God calls you, you had better begin with the one
indispensable Christian response,
the response that
transcends denominations, links Catholic and Protestant in a unique unity:
"Let it be with me, Lord, as you say."
With those giant
monosyllables on your lips and in your heart, you will have built your house on
the Gospel rock.
The rains will fall
and the floods come, the winds will blow and beat upon your house, but it will
not fall.
Building on the rock
that is Christ, you will always, by his gracious giving, "do whatever he
tells you."
Do that and I can
promise you one thing without the slightest Roman reservation. "Do
whatever he tells you" and you will experience the joy which, Jesus
promised, "no one will take from you".
In the midst of sin
and war, of disease and death, you will echo and reecho the infectious
invitation of Eugene O'Neill's Lazarus summoned from the grave:
Laugh with me!
Death is dead!
Fear is no more!
There is only life!
There is only
laughter!
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