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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 4 years ago

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8th December >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 1:26-38 for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary: ‘Let what you have said be done to me’.

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

Gospel (Except USA)

Luke 1:26-38

'I am the handmaid of the Lord'

The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’ She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you’ the angel answered ‘and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible to God.’ ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord,’ said Mary ‘let what you have said be done to me.’ And the angel left her.

Gospel (USA)

Luke 1:26–38

Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Reflections (8)

(i) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

The scene in today’s gospel reading is very beautifully depicted in one of our stained glass windows in the sanctuary and also on the front of the altar below the stained glass. The annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary is one of those gospel scenes that has inspired artists down the centuries, such as stained glass artists, painters, carvers. They sensed the significance of this event in God’s dealings with humanity. This was the moment when God needed Mary’s consent to become the mother of his Son. God had chosen Mary for this hugely significant role. A great deal would depend on whether or not Mary consented to the choice that God was making of her. Out of all the women in history, God chose this young teenage woman from a small village Galilee during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. God’s choice of this woman was a wonderful privilege for her but would also make great demands on her. At that moment, the whole human race desperately needed her to say ‘yes’ to God’s choice and God’s call. The gospel reading speaks of Mary as being ‘deeply disturbed’ by this visitation from God and full of questions, and, yet, in the end she lived up to humanity’s expectations. She surrendered wholeheartedly to God’s choice of her, God’s call on her, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me’. She said ‘Yes’ to God, on all our behalf, for all our sakes. It was because of her ‘yes’ to God’s desire for her life that we would receive the gift of Jesus from God.

The story in our gospel reading expresses the meaning of today’s feast of Mary’s ‘Immaculate Conception’. We are celebrating today Mary’s total responsiveness to God’s call, her complete openness to God’s will. To say that Mary was immaculately conceived is to say that Mary was untouched by sin. There was no sin in her life from the first moment of her existence. Her life was one constant ‘Yes’ to God’s choice and call, from her conception to her final breath. She allowed herself to be touched by God’s grace in a very complete way. She was ‘full of grace’, full of God. God’s will was done in her, as it is in heaven. She was, truly, a woman of God, and this made her a woman for others. According to Luke’s gospel, after her annunciation, Mary immediately gives herself in love to Elizabeth her older cousin, staying with her for several months. She went on to give herself to Jesus, her son, and she let go of her precious Son so as to give him to us all. After her Son’s death and resurrection, she gave herself in love to his followers, the disciples. She was present with them at Pentecost when the Spirit of the risen Lord, the Holy Spirit, came down upon them. As a woman of God for others, we see in her the human person we are all called to become. In our second reading, Paul declares that God ‘chose us in Christ to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence’. Mary is the person God desires us all to be.

The story of Adam and Eve tells a very different story to the story Luke tells in the gospel reading. Adam had said ‘no’ to God’s choice and call, eating of the tree that was out of bounds. The break in his relationship with God led him to hide from God, and God had to call out after him, ‘Where are you?’ In hiding from God, he also hid from himself. Refusing to take responsibility for his actions, he blamed his wife Eve, ‘it was the woman’; she in turn blamed the serpent, ‘the serpent tempted me’. For the author of the Book of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve is the story of us all. We are all prone to going out own way, turning away from God’s presence, God’s call, and, then, hiding from God, and, as a result, losing touch with our true selves and damaging our relationship with others. Yet, when that happens, the Lord continues the same question he asked Adam, ‘Where are you?’ The Lord asks this question not in an accusing way but in a loving way. Jesus, Mary’s Son, came to seek out and save the lost, which is all of us. Adam hid from God out of fear, but the Lord in the gospels constantly says to people, ‘Do not be afraid’. As Saint John says in his first letter, perfect love casts out fear.

Today’s feast reminds us that we have someone we can look to and be inspired by in our efforts to respond to the Lord’s choice of us and his call to us, his searching love. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is also our mother. She knows the power of sin and what it can do to human lives; she saw what it did to her Son. She surrounds us with her intercession and prayer so that we too can become the human person God desires us to be. That is why we can ask her with confidence to pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

And/Or

(ii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

In this morning’s gospel reading Mary is addressed by the angel Gabriel as ‘so highly favoured’. In the very next verse Luke says ‘she was deeply disturbed by these words’. She was highly favoured and deeply disturbed. Sometimes being highly favoured can be deeply disturbing. We wonder, ‘Why I am being highly favoured?’ We can struggle to receive the favour of others because we feel we don’t deserve it, and, at a deeper level, we can struggle to receive the favour of God. How can I be favoured by God when I have done so little? Yet, like Mary, although in a way that is unique to each of us, we have all been highly favoured by God. Our coming to birth was the work of God’s favour; our baptism into Christ was the work of God’s favour. As Saint John put it in one of his letters, ‘God loved us first’. As Paul puts it at the beginning of today’s second reading, ‘Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ’.

Among all human beings, Mary was uniquely favoured by God. She was chosen by God to be the mother of God’s Son. Today’s feast proclaims that she was uniquely favoured by God from the moment of her conception in her own mother’s womb. From that first moment of her life, God was preparing her to be the woman from whose womb Jesus, the Son of God, would be born. The gospel reading this morning suggests that Mary struggled to receive this extraordinary favour of God, and all it would entail for her. Initially, she was deeply disturbed, and then she questioned, ‘But how can this come about?’ Finally, she surrendered, ‘Let what you have said be done to me’. From that moment of her surrender to God’s favour of her, she became a source of blessing to all of humanity, the one through whom Jesus came to us. By her complete surrender to God’s desire for her life, she gave birth to Jesus in her heart, before she gave birth to him in her womb. In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed to God, ‘Not my will but yours be done’. Luke presents Mary as entering into that prayer of Jesus before Jesus was even conceived, ‘Let what you have said be done to me’.

If we are like Mary in being highly favoured by God, we are also called to be like her in the way that we respond to God’s favour of us. We are to surrender our lives to God who has so favoured us, allowing God to work in and through us according to his purpose for our lives. Then, like Mary, we too will give birth to Christ in our lives. We too will be a source of blessing for others.

And/Or

(iii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

And/Or

(iv) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

Children’s games have become a lot more sophisticated in recent years, especially those games that are computer based. A lot of such digital games will be purchased as Christmas presents in the weeks to come. Many of them are very expensive. Yet, there are some games that never seem to go out of fashion with children and have no financial cost attached to them. One such game is that of hide and seek. A child hides somewhere and other children have to find him or her. The thrill of the search and the joy of discovery holds an attraction for children. Perhaps this game has an appeal to children because we are all seekers at heart regardless of our age. Saint Augustine said that our hearts will always be restless until they rest in God. In that sense, all our searching is, ultimately, a search for God.

There are times when we might be tempted to think that God is playing hid and seek with us. We seek God but we struggle to find God. God appears to be in hiding. Many of the psalms in the Jewish Scriptures seem to spring from the experience of God seeming to ‘hide his face’, in the language of the Psalms. The person praying calls out to God to show his face, to make himself known, to stop hiding. When Jesus cried out on the cross in the language of one of the psalms, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’, he was asking God, ‘Where are you?’ It is a question that some of us may have addressed to God at some time.

In today’s first reading, however, it is God who asks the question, ‘Where are you?’ It is God who is seeking Adam and Adam who is hiding from God. There is a sense in which the story of Adam and Eve, and it is a story, is the story of every human being. The author was portraying humankind in its relationship with God. We may, at heart, be people who seek God continually. Yet there are times when we hide from God and God becomes the seeker, crying out to us, ‘Where are you?’ In the case of Adam, it was shame and guilt that caused him to hide from God. God had given Adam and Eve all the beauty and goodness of the garden of Eden. There was only one tree in the garden that God had placed out of bounds, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet, the couple could not resist the temptation to eat of this tree, sensing that in eating of its fruit they would become like God. In the immediate aftermath of this act, they hide from God who had given so generously to them. The sense that all is not well in our relationship with God can cause us to hide from God too. We are reluctant to face God. Yet, the first reading suggests that whenever we hide from God out of shame or guilt, God continues to seek us out. God continues to pursue us in his love. God’s question, ‘Where are you?’ springs from a heart of love. Jesus, Mary’s Son, revealed this seeking heart of God to the full. He said of himself that he came to seek out and to save the lost. He wanted to find those who were hiding from God out of fear of God’s displeasure. He wanted to reveal to them God’s faithful and enduring love, and to call them back into a loving relationship with God. There are times in our lives when we simply need to allow ourselves to be found by God. God is always calling on us to step out into the light of God’s love and to open our hearts to God’s light which continues to shine upon us through Jesus, his Son, a light no darkness in our lives can overcome.

Today’s feast celebrates the good news that Mary was always open to the light of God’s love, from the first moment of her conception in the womb of her mother. At no point did Mary ever hide from God, because she had no reason to do so. God never had to address the question to her, ‘Where are you?’ In today’s gospel reading, God seeks out Mary through his messenger, the angel Gabriel. Mary does not hide from God’s messenger. Yes, we are told that she was ‘deeply disturbed’ by Gabriel’s greeting. Yes, her response to Gabriel’s subsequent message was initially a questioning one, ‘How can this come about?’ God’s presence will always be, to some extent, a disturbing experience; it will always leave us with questions. Yet, despite these uncomfortable feelings, Mary stood her ground. She remained open to God’s presence. She surrendered to God’s desire for her life, ‘let what you have said be done to me’, thereby allowing God’s desire for all humanity to come to pass. On this, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we ask Mary to pray for us sinners now, so that we may be as open and responsive to God’s presence to us and to God’s desire for our lives as she was.

And/Or

(v) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his poem, ‘The Blessed Virgin compared to the air we breathe’, concludes with a prayer to Mary, ‘Be thou then, O thou dear Mother, my atmosphere; My happier world, wherein To wend and meet no sin’. Today’s feast celebrates Mary as that happier world wherein we meet no sin. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. Mary’s life was a constant ‘yes’ to God’s will. God’s will was done in and through her life on earth, as it is in heaven. God ruled in her life. The fullness of God’s love and grace touched Mary from the first moment of her conception. She was untouched by that sin of Adam referred to at the beginning of today’s first reading. Because Adam rebelled against God’s will for his life, he was uncomfortable in God’s presence. He hid from God and God had to call out to him, ‘Where are you?’ Mary had no reason to hide from God because she was always open to doing God’s will. She lived her life in the light of God’s presence. She was, in that sense, full of God, or in the words of the angel Gabriel ‘full of grace’. It was because Mary was so full of God from the first moment of her conception that she could respond to God’s call to her through the angel Gabriel with the words, ‘Let what you have said be done to me’.

The principal church in our Diocese is in Marlborough Street. We usually call it the Pro-Cathedral. However, its official title is Saint Mary’s (the Immaculate Conception). We don’t often speak of Mary as Saint Mary. We have other ways of referring to her. Yet, today’s feast celebrates Mary’s sainthood, her sanctity, her holiness. We consider her the greatest of all the saints because we believe that she was holy or saintly from the first moment of her conception. In some mysterious way that we do not fully understand, Mary was completely open to God’s love and God’s will from the first moment of her existence in her mother’s womb. We do not make this claim about any other saint in the church. The church has always been careful not to make a kind of goddess out of Mary. She is simply the greatest of the saints. This belief in Mary’s holiness or sinlessness from her conception in her mother’s womb has ancient roots in the church, even though it was not officially proclaimed by the church until 1854 when on the 8th of December Pope Pius IX promulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

No more than any of the other saints, Mary was not removed from the struggles and sufferings of the human condition. Something of her struggle comes through in today’s gospel reading She was initially deeply disturbed by the words of the angel Gabriel. She was full of questions in response to Gabriel’s good news, ‘How can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ Luke goes on to tell us in his gospel that Simeon announced to her that a sword would pierce her soul. Luke also tells us that when she and Joseph found their son in the Temple after much searching they did not understand what he said to them. The evangelist Mark has Mary coming with other members of her extended family to take Jesus back home, away from his ministry, because people were saying that he is out of his mind. The evangelist John has Mary standing at the foot of the cross with some other women and the beloved disciples, suffering the agony of watching her only Son die a slow and painful death. There is a very human picture of Mary in the gospels. It was in the midst of all the struggles and pains of life that she lived out her ‘yes’ to God’s will for her life.

Mary’s holiness from her conception does not remove her from us. She is our companion on our pilgrim journey. She is given to us as a perpetual help. That is why we ask her to pray for us ‘sinners’ now and at the hour of our death. We may be sinners but Paul reminds us in the second reading that before the world was made God ‘chose us in Christ to be holy and spotless and to live through love in his presence’. Paul spells out there our calling from the beginning of time, a calling that is worthy of our identity as people made in the image of God. Mary has lived that calling to the full; she was holy and lived through love in God’s presence. We look to her to help us to live out that same calling. In the words of the Preface of today’s Mass, she is an advocate of grace for God’s people, for all of us. She prays for us for the grace we need to be as generous as she was in responding to God’s purpose for our lives.

And/Or

(vi) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Mary’s freedom from sin was widely proclaimed in the early church. However, the formal declaration of Mary’s freedom from sin was made by Pius IX in 1854 when he declared that Mary ‘from the first moment of her conception was preserved from all stain of sin, by the singular grace and privilege of God and by the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world’.

If the essence of sin is turning away from God, today’s feast proclaims that Mary has always been totally turned towards God, completely open to God’s love and to God’s presence. Her openness is captured in her final words in today’s gospel reading, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me’. The greeting of Gabriel to Mary in this morning’s gospel, ‘Hail, full of grace’, captures the meaning of today’s feast. Mary is full of God’s gracious love.

We live in a world where at times sin and evil seem to reign supreme. The first reading presents the human tendency to go against what God asks of us and, then, resulting from that, to hide from God. That portrayal of Adam in the first reading stands in contrast to the portrayal of Mary in the gospel. They are at opposite ends of a spectrum. Most of us find ourselves somewhere in between both. We are aware of our tendency to hide from God and to do our own thing, like Adam. Yet we also sense a call to turn towards God and to open ourselves completely to God’s presence, like Mary. Paul refers to this call in today’s second reading, when he tells us that God has chosen us in Christ to be holy and spotless and to live through love in God’s presence.

Today we celebrate the good news that at least one human being, Mary, has responded fully to that call of God. As we strive to answer that same call, we look to Mary for inspiration and for help. We ask her to pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death, so that the grace and love of God that embraced Mary from the first moment of her existence would also touch our own lives.

While today’s feast celebrates Mary’s unique sinlessness, it does not for a moment suggest that she was any less human than we all are. Her holiness was lived amidst the struggles and sorrows of this world. Her son was a sign of contradiction, a sword pierced her own soul; she often puzzled over the words and actions of her son, and she suffered the unique agony of a parent who sees an offspring die. She knew the darker side of life, and, yet, in the midst of it all she remained completely open to God and to God’s will for her life. Her humanity makes her holiness in some way accessible to us.

What was said to Mary in today’s gospel reading is said to all of us, ‘The Lord is with you’. The Lord is with all of us; he is present to all of us. Mary was completely open to the Lord’s presence to her. Because of her openness, her responsiveness, God’s Son was formed within her. The season of Advent calls on us to be as open to God’s presence as Mary was, so that God’s Son may also be formed in our own lives too. Writing to the Galatians, Paul told them that he was in the pains of childbirth ‘until Christ is formed in you’. This Advent may Christ grow more fully within us, and be formed in us.

And/Or

(vii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

On this feast we celebrate the good news that from the beginning of her life there was no darkness in Mary, no sin in her. She was full of God’s grace from the first moment of her existence. If sin is turning away from God, today’s feast celebrates how Mary has always been totally turned towards God, completely open to God’s call and God’s presence. Her openness to God’s call is shown especially in her final words in today’s gospel reading, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me’.

We live in a world where we are very aware of the presence of sin and evil. The first reading this morning is part of the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. In the story God placed Adam in a beautiful garden with trees that were pleasant to the sight and good for food. There was only one tree of which God asked Adam not to eat, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet, Adam and Eve could not resist the temptation to eat from this tree. In spite of all the many ways that God had blessed them in the garden, they took more than they were entitled to. Having rejected God’s will in this way they hid from God, and, so, God cries out in our reading, ‘Where are you?’ We know that at times we can be like Adam and Eve; we fail to give ourselves over to doing what God asks of us. Yet we also sense a call to open ourselves more completely to God’s word and God’s will for our lives. We recognize that, in the words of today’s second reading, God has chosen us in Christ to be holy and to live through love in God’s presence. That vision for human living attracts us and continues to draw us. Deep within us we have this yearning to become the person that God calls us to be.

Today, on this feast of the Immaculate Conception, we celebrate the good news that at least one human being, Mary, has responded fully to that call of God to be holy and to live through love in God’s presence. As we try to answer that same call, we can look to Mary for inspiration and for help. In the words of the Hail Mary, we ask Mary to pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death, so that the grace and goodness of God that filled her from the first moment of her existence would also touch our own lives. We see in her the person we are called to be.

Mary’s holiness and goodness does not in any way make her remote from us. Her openness to God’s word and call was lived out in the midst of all the struggles and sorrows of life. Because of her special relationship to Jesus, a sword pierced her heart. The gospels suggest that she often puzzled over the words and actions of her son. She struggled to let him go as he answered God’s call to form a new family, a family of disciples. She suffered the agony of a parent who sees her own child die tragically and painfully in the prime of life. Mary plumbed the darker depths of human experience, and, yet, in the midst of it all she remained completely open to God’s life-giving word. She remained full of God’s light even as she travelled her own valley of darkness.

The season of Advent calls on us to be as open as Mary was to the Lord’s call and presence to us, even in our own times of painful struggle. If we are, then our lives, like her life, will be a source of blessing for others.

And/or

(viii) Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

John Henry Newman was canonized a couple of months ago. After his conversion to Catholicism, one of the people that he received into the church was the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, in 1866. Hopkins became a Jesuit two years later; he went on to teach in the Jesuit run University College that Newman had started on Saint Stephen’s Green in Dublin. It was there Hopkins died in 1889. Hopkins wrote a poem on Mary entitled, ‘The Blessed Virgin compared to the air we breathe’. He speaks of air as the nursing element of the universe. What he calls ‘the world-mothering air’ speaks to him of Mary. The poem was composed a couple of decades after Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. In his poem, Hopkins makes reference to Mary’s Immaculate Conception: ‘Mary Immaculate, merely a woman, yet whose presence, power is great as no goddess’s was deemed, dreamed, who this one work has to do – Let all God’s glory through’. Today’s feast celebrates Mary as one who let all God’s glory through. If saints are people through whose lives shines the light of God’s glory, this is especially true of Mary. There was nothing in Mary to block the light of God’s glorious presence. In his poem, Hopkins, addresses Mary, ‘Be thou then, O thou dear Mother, my atmosphere; My happier world, wherein to wend and meet no sin’.

The Pope’s proclamation of Mary’s Immaculate Conception in 1854 articulated what had been the faith of the church since earliest times. It was understood by the faithful that Mary was preserved by God from sin because of her unique privilege of being the mother of God’s Son. In the words of today’s gospel reading, she was ‘highly favoured’ by God, because she was chosen to carry God’s Son in her womb, give birth to him and nurture him with a mother’s love and, then, to let him go as an adult for the doing of God’s work in the world. In his poem, Hopkins beautifully expresses this special favour that God gave to Mary. He says, that she ‘gave God’s infinity dwindled to infancy welcome in womb and breast, birth, milk, and all the rest’. Mary was highly favoured and, yet, she had to respond to God’s favour. Today’s gospel reading shows that her response to God’s favour was complete, ‘I am the servant of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me’. She gave a total ‘yes’ to the unique grace and call that God gave her. There was no holding back from her. She was completely open to God’s call. Her surrender to God’s purpose for her life was total and enduring. Her response to God at the moment of the annunciation anticipated her own son’s response to God in the garden of Gethsemane, ‘Not my will but yours be done’.

Speaking of Mary in these terms may seem to make her remote from us. Perhaps we can more easily recognize something of ourselves in Adam’s story in the first reading. Like him, we go against what God desires for us, reaching for what is out of bounds. Like him, we blame others for our own failings. Like him, having gone against God’s desire for our lives, we hide from God, and God has to call after us, ‘Where are you?’ All of that may be true of us, and, yet, it is never our full story. God’s question, ‘Where are you?’ reveals a God who seeks out the lost. Mary’s Son, Jesus, shows us that God is constantly seeking us out in his love, working to draw us into a life-giving communion with himself. God has a wonderful purpose for our lives, which he never abandons, no matter how often we turn from God. Saint Paul in today’s second reading expresses God’s purpose for our lives very eloquently. God ‘chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence, determining that we should become his adopted sons (and daughters)’. God’s purpose for our lives is that his Son would be formed in our lives, so that we can live through love in God’s presence, so that we can live in the same loving way that Jesus did. In Mary, we see this person we are called to be. God’s Son was formed in her, not just physically, but spiritually. She lived through love in God’s presence, giving herself in love to God and to others.

The gospel reading suggests that Mary’s becoming the person God was calling her to be did not come easy to her. The path that God was asking her to take was not always clear to her, ‘How can this come about?’ She needed God’s help, the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit who overshadowed her at the annunciation overshadowed us at our baptism and remains with us all through life. She herself can help us to become the person God calls us to be. That is why we ask her to pray for us now, and at the hour of our death. Hopkins refers to this role of Mary in our lives in his poem, saying that she ‘mantles the guilty globe, since God has let her dispense her prayers, his providence’.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

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romancatholicreflections · 7 years ago

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8th December >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflection on Luke 1:26-38 for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: ‘Let what you have said be done to me’. Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada) Luke 1:26-38 The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’ She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you’ the angel answered ‘and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible to God.’ ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord,’ said Mary ‘let what you have said be done to me.’ And the angel left her. Gospel (USA) Luke 1:26–38 Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you. The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. Reflections (5) (i) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary Children’s games have become a lot more sophisticated in recent years, especially those games that are computer based. A lot of such digital games will be purchased as Christmas presents in the weeks to come. Many of them are very expensive. Yet, there are some games that never seem to go out of fashion with children and have no financial cost attached to them. One such game is that of hide and seek. A child hides somewhere and other children have to find him or her. The thrill of the search and the joy of discovery holds an attraction for children. Perhaps this game has an appeal to children because we are all seekers at heart regardless of our age. Saint Augustine said that our hearts will always be restless until they rest in God. In that sense, all our searching is, ultimately, a search for God. There are times when we might be tempted to think that God is playing hid and seek with us. We seek God but we struggle to find God. God appears to be in hiding. Many of the psalms in the Jewish Scriptures seem to spring from the experience of God seeming to ‘hide his face’, in the language of the Psalms. The person praying calls out to God to show his face, to make himself known, to stop hiding. When Jesus cried out on the cross in the language of one of the psalms, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’, he was asking God, ‘Where are you?’ It is a question that some of us may have addressed to God at some time. In today’s first reading, however, it is God who asks the question, ‘Where are you?’ It is God who is seeking Adam and Adam who is hiding from God. There is a sense in which the story of Adam and Eve, and it is a story, is the story of every human being. The author was portraying humankind in its relationship with God. We may, at heart, be people who seek God continually. Yet there are times when we hide from God and God becomes the seeker, crying out to us, ‘Where are you?’ In the case of Adam, it was shame and guilt that caused him to hide from God. God had given Adam and Eve all the beauty and goodness of the garden of Eden. There was only one tree in the garden that God had placed out of bounds, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet, the couple could not resist the temptation to eat of this tree, sensing that in eating of its fruit they would become like God. In the immediate aftermath of this act, they hide from God who had given so generously to them. The sense that all is not well in our relationship with God can cause us to hide from God too. We are reluctant to face God. Yet, the first reading suggests that whenever we hide from God out of shame or guilt, God continues to seek us out. God continues to pursue us in his love. God’s question, ‘Where are you?’ springs from a heart of love. Jesus, Mary’s Son, revealed this seeking heart of God to the full. He said of himself that he came to seek out and to save the lost. He wanted to find those who were hiding from God out of fear of God’s displeasure. He wanted to reveal to them God’s faithful and enduring love, and to call them back into a loving relationship with God. There are times in our lives when we simply need to allow ourselves to be found by God. God is always calling on us to step out into the light of God’s love and to open our hearts to God’s light which continues to shine upon us through Jesus, his Son, a light no darkness in our lives can overcome. Today’s feast celebrates the good news that Mary was always open to the light of God’s love, from the first moment of her conception in the womb of her mother. At no point did Mary ever hide from God, because she had no reason to do so. God never had to address the question to her, ‘Where are you?’ In today’s gospel reading, God seeks out Mary through his messenger, the angel Gabriel. Mary does not hide from God’s messenger. Yes, we are told that she was ‘deeply disturbed’ by Gabriel’s greeting. Yes, her response to Gabriel’s subsequent message was initially a questioning one, ‘How can this come about?’ God’s presence will always be, to some extent, a disturbing experience; it will always leave us with questions. Yet, despite these uncomfortable feelings, Mary stood her ground. She remained open to God’s presence. She surrendered to God’s desire for her life, ‘let what you have said be done to me’, thereby allowing God’s desire for all humanity to come to pass. On this, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we ask Mary to pray for us sinners now, so that we may be as open and responsive to God’s presence to us and to God’s desire for our lives as she was. And/Or (ii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary In this morning’s gospel reading Mary is addressed by the angel Gabriel as ‘so highly favoured’. In the very next verse Luke says ‘she was deeply disturbed by these words’. She was highly favoured and deeply disturbed. Sometimes being highly favoured can be deeply disturbing. We wonder, ‘Why I am being highly favoured?’ We can struggle to receive the favour of others because we feel we don’t deserve it, and, at a deeper level, we can struggle to receive the favour of God. How can I be favoured by God when I have done so little? Yet, like Mary, although in a way that is unique to each of us, we have all been highly favoured by God. Our coming to birth was the work of God’s favour; our baptism into Christ was the work of God’s favour. As Saint John put it in one of his letters, ‘God loved us first’. As Paul puts it at the beginning of today’s second reading, ‘Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ’. Among all human beings, Mary was uniquely favoured by God. She was chosen by God to be the mother of God’s Son. Today’s feast proclaims that she was uniquely favoured by God from the moment of her conception in her own mother’s womb. From that first moment of her life, God was preparing her to be the woman from whose womb Jesus, the Son of God, would be born. The gospel reading this morning suggests that Mary struggled to receive this extraordinary favour of God, and all it would entail for her. Initially, she was deeply disturbed, and then she questioned, ‘But how can this come about?’ Finally, she surrendered, ‘Let what you have said be done to me’. From that moment of her surrender to God’s favour of her, she became a source of blessing to all of humanity, the one through whom Jesus came to us. By her complete surrender to God’s desire for her life, she gave birth to Jesus in her heart, before she gave birth to him in her womb. In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed to God, ‘Not my will but yours be done’. Luke presents Mary as entering into that prayer of Jesus before Jesus was even conceived, ‘Let what you have said be done to me’. If we are like Mary in being highly favoured by God, we are also called to be like her in the way that we respond to God’s favour of us. We are to surrender our lives to God who has so favoured us, allowing God to work in and through us according to his purpose for our lives. Then, like Mary, we too will give birth to Christ in our lives. We too will be a source of blessing for others. And/Or (iii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his poem, ‘The Blessed Virgin compared to the air we breathe’, concludes with a prayer to Mary, ‘Be thou then, O thou dear Mother, my atmosphere; My happier world, wherein To wend and meet no sin’. Today’s feast celebrates Mary as that happier world wherein we meet no sin. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. Mary’s life was a constant ‘yes’ to God’s will. God’s will was done in and through her life on earth, as it is in heaven. God ruled in her life. The fullness of God’s love and grace touched Mary from the first moment of her conception. She was untouched by that sin of Adam referred to at the beginning of today’s first reading. Because Adam rebelled against God’s will for his life, he was uncomfortable in God’s presence. He hid from God and God had to call out to him, ‘Where are you?’ Mary had no reason to hide from God because she was always open to doing God’s will. She lived her life in the light of God’s presence. She was, in that sense, full of God, or in the words of the angel Gabriel ‘full of grace’. It was because Mary was so full of God from the first moment of her conception that she could respond to God’s call to her through the angel Gabriel with the words, ‘Let what you have said be done to me’. The principal church in our Diocese is in Marlborough Street. We usually call it the Pro-Cathedral. However, its official title is Saint Mary’s (the Immaculate Conception). We don’t often speak of Mary as Saint Mary. We have other ways of referring to her. Yet, today’s feast celebrates Mary’s sainthood, her sanctity, her holiness. We consider her the greatest of all the saints because we believe that she was holy or saintly from the first moment of her conception. In some mysterious way that we do not fully understand, Mary was completely open to God’s love and God’s will from the first moment of her existence in her mother’s womb. We do not make this claim about any other saint in the church. The church has always been careful not to make a kind of goddess out of Mary. She is simply the greatest of the saints. This belief in Mary’s holiness or sinlessness from her conception in her mother’s womb has ancient roots in the church, even though it was not officially proclaimed by the church until 1854 when on the 8th of December Pope Pius IX promulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. No more than any of the other saints, Mary was not removed from the struggles and sufferings of the human condition. Something of her struggle comes through in today’s gospel reading She was initially deeply disturbed by the words of the angel Gabriel. She was full of questions in response to Gabriel’s good news, ‘How can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ Luke goes on to tell us in his gospel that Simeon announced to her that a sword would pierce her soul. Luke also tells us that when she and Joseph found their son in the Temple after much searching they did not understand what he said to them. The evangelist Mark has Mary coming with other members of her extended family to take Jesus back home, away from his ministry, because people were saying that he is out of his mind. The evangelist John has Mary standing at the foot of the cross with some other women and the beloved disciples, suffering the agony of watching her only Son die a slow and painful death. There is a very human picture of Mary in the gospels. It was in the midst of all the struggles and pains of life that she lived out her ‘yes’ to God’s will for her life. Mary’s holiness from her conception does not remove her from us. She is our companion on our pilgrim journey. She is given to us as a perpetual help. That is why we ask her to pray for us ‘sinners’ now and at the hour of our death. We may be sinners but Paul reminds us in the second reading that before the world was made God ‘chose us in Christ to be holy and spotless and to live through love in his presence’. Paul spells out there our calling from the beginning of time, a calling that is worthy of our identity as people made in the image of God. Mary has lived that calling to the full; she was holy and lived through love in God’s presence. We look to her to help us to live out that same calling. In the words of the Preface of today’s Mass, she is an advocate of grace for God’s people, for all of us. She prays for us for the grace we need to be as generous as she was in responding to God’s purpose for our lives. And/Or (iv) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mary’s freedom from sin was widely proclaimed in the early church. However, the formal declaration of Mary’s freedom from sin was made by Pius IX in 1854 when he declared that Mary ‘from the first moment of her conception was preserved from all stain of sin, by the singular grace and privilege of God and by the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world’. If the essence of sin is turning away from God, today’s feast proclaims that Mary has always been totally turned towards God, completely open to God’s love and to God’s presence. Her openness is captured in her final words in today’s gospel reading, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me’. The greeting of Gabriel to Mary in this morning’s gospel, ‘Hail, full of grace’, captures the meaning of today’s feast. Mary is full of God’s gracious love. We live in a world where at times sin and evil seem to reign supreme. The first reading presents the human tendency to go against what God asks of us and, then, resulting from that, to hide from God. That portrayal of Adam in the first reading stands in contrast to the portrayal of Mary in the gospel. They are at opposite ends of a spectrum. Most of us find ourselves somewhere in between both. We are aware of our tendency to hide from God and to do our own thing, like Adam. Yet we also sense a call to turn towards God and to open ourselves completely to God’s presence, like Mary. Paul refers to this call in today’s second reading, when he tells us that God has chosen us in Christ to be holy and spotless and to live through love in God’s presence. Today we celebrate the good news that at least one human being, Mary, has responded fully to that call of God. As we strive to answer that same call, we look to Mary for inspiration and for help. We ask her to pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death, so that the grace and love of God that embraced Mary from the first moment of her existence would also touch our own lives. While today’s feast celebrates Mary’s unique sinlessness, it does not for a moment suggest that she was any less human than we all are. Her holiness was lived amidst the struggles and sorrows of this world. Her son was a sign of contradiction, a sword pierced her own soul; she often puzzled over the words and actions of her son, and she suffered the unique agony of a parent who sees an offspring die. She knew the darker side of life, and, yet, in the midst of it all she remained completely open to God and to God’s will for her life. Her humanity makes her holiness in some way accessible to us. What was said to Mary in today’s gospel reading is said to all of us, ‘The Lord is with you’. The Lord is with all of us; he is present to all of us. Mary was completely open to the Lord’s presence to her. Because of her openness, her responsiveness, God’s Son was formed within her. The season of Advent calls on us to be as open to God’s presence as Mary was, so that God’s Son may also be formed in our own lives too. Writing to the Galatians, Paul told them that he was in the pains of childbirth ‘until Christ is formed in you’. This Advent may Christ grow more fully within us, and be formed in us. And/Or (v) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary On this feast we celebrate the good news that from the beginning of her life there was no darkness in Mary, no sin in her. She was full of God’s grace from the first moment of her existence. If sin is turning away from God, today’s feast celebrates how Mary has always been totally turned towards God, completely open to God’s call and God’s presence. Her openness to God’s call is shown especially in her final words in today’s gospel reading, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me’. We live in a world where we are very aware of the presence of sin and evil. The first reading this morning is part of the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. In the story God placed Adam in a beautiful garden with trees that were pleasant to the sight and good for food. There was only one tree of which God asked Adam not to eat, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet, Adam and Eve could not resist the temptation to eat from this tree. In spite of all the many ways that God had blessed them in the garden, they took more than they were entitled to. Having rejected God’s will in this way they hid from God, and, so, God cries out in our reading, ‘Where are you?’ We know that at times we can be like Adam and Eve; we fail to give ourselves over to doing what God asks of us. Yet we also sense a call to open ourselves more completely to God’s word and God’s will for our lives. We recognize that, in the words of today’s second reading, God has chosen us in Christ to be holy and to live through love in God’s presence. That vision for human living attracts us and continues to draw us. Deep within us we have this yearning to become the person that God calls us to be. Today, on this feast of the Immaculate Conception, we celebrate the good news that at least one human being, Mary, has responded fully to that call of God to be holy and to live through love in God’s presence. As we try to answer that same call, we can look to Mary for inspiration and for help. In the words of the Hail Mary, we ask Mary to pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death, so that the grace and goodness of God that filled her from the first moment of her existence would also touch our own lives. We see in her the person we are called to be. Mary’s holiness and goodness does not in any way make her remote from us. Her openness to God’s word and call was lived out in the midst of all the struggles and sorrows of life. Because of her special relationship to Jesus, a sword pierced her heart. The gospels suggest that she often puzzled over the words and actions of her son. She struggled to let him go as he answered God’s call to form a new family, a family of disciples. She suffered the agony of a parent who sees her own child die tragically and painfully in the prime of life. Mary plumbed the darker depths of human experience, and, yet, in the midst of it all she remained completely open to God’s life-giving word. She remained full of God’s light even as she travelled her own valley of darkness. The season of Advent calls on us to be as open as Mary was to the Lord’s call and presence to us, even in our own times of painful struggle. If we are, then our lives, like her life, will be a source of blessing for others. Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland. Email: [email protected] or [email protected] Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie Please join us via our webcam. Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC. Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf. Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

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nathaniel-g-blog · 5 years ago

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What saith the Lord?

“If you extract the precious from the worthless, you will become My spokesman.”

- Jeremiah 15:19, as cited on the first page of John Bevere’s Thus Saith The Lord? How to know when God is speaking to you through another

“Watch out for fake heads deviled disguised men Arriving from the dawn and spawned with ill forms That'll leave you laying dead in the womb like stillborns”

- Jedi Mind Tricks, “Heavenly Divine,” from the album Violent by Design

“We must put the DDT which destroys parasites, the bearers of disease, on the same level as the Christian religion which wages war on embryonic heresies and instincts, and on evil as yet unborn.”

-Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth

This summer I begged Gillian Rose to tell me what to do. I had learned to disavow the desire to be seen as, to see myself as, a good person. I still wanted to create the conditions under which I could give birth to the person I wanted to be, and I wanted her to show me how. I also prayed. Answers were not forthcoming. Prophecy was contentious in my parents’ church tradition. Was it is about the future or the present? The present in light of the future or the future in light of the present? Was biblical prophecy primarily concerned with things to come or things which have already happened? Perhaps most importantly, how and through whom could God’s will be expressed with the opening qualifier “thus saith the Lord?” One of the first and only theological arguments I had with the woman I married was regarding slavery. I thought Christians should consider themselves slaves, with God as our master. This was non-negotiable. I was God’s property, and that meant desiring earnestly to perform mastery. I couldn’t become God, but I could become his messenger. The thought was enthralling. To desire mastery while insisting that you are a slave. The pleasure of power for those who have disavowed both. The structure of antagonism. I have heard enough parents tell me that they love the children they are abusing to suspect that reality itself is dysphoric. It is not that our desires don’t match onto the desires of others but that, as Paul observed, we do not even want the things we want. Our children, our bodies, our relations do not match themselves or what we think we need from them. We do not understand. Prophecy announced that things are not as they should be. This seemed to match my experience. All that was left to be adjudicated was how things are, how they should be, and the nature of their possible relation. One crude reading was that the way things are is the way we want them to be, the way they should be is how God wants them to be, and the nature of their relation is submission. I didn’t know anyone who wanted things to be the way they are. If we wanted to want something different, we had to remember that God had ordained the world as it actually was. Everything defined by its opposite, non-identical even with itself. The split in reality as the contest between what God wants and what we want. Sometimes the only way to know what God wants is to work backwards, to counterpose what we think as its obvious opposite. What do we actually want? This remains a mystery because our only concern is what God wants. The split exists as a projection, not covering over an underlying unity but positing one, the hope that we can once for all rid the world of its instability, that God can rid us of ourselves. We only wanted the things that God wanted; as it turned out we did not want anything at all. This year I realized that some patterns of life had been or become unlivable. I needed something different. I needed a word from God. Several people in my life had been preparing for such an opportunity, they wanted to encourage me and tell me that God did not want me to be miserable, but also to clarify that the way to be happy was more fully renouncing myself. I felt I had nothing left to renounce but was willing to try. Turn to God, turn away from yourself. But where was God to be found? Not anywhere on heaven or earth, it seemed. God was there, and if you didn’t suspend your powers of judgment and seek an illegible martyrdom, you would be sorry. But I already was. They insisted on a relationship with this God while implicitly asserting its impossibility. Accept the logically unacceptable. Raging against and insisting upon the permanence of melancholy. So lonely with this god, with no escape. This weekend I was in a basement looking for a Casio, looking to express feelings I didn’t understand on an instrument I understood even less. I stopped cold when I saw again the cover to the Manchester Orchestra album I'm Like a Virgin Losing a Child. It stopped me in my tracks as I remembered. Two things in particular I remember about that album: 1) the songs all sort of sound the same because they sort of are 2) listening and being sad about everything, about what I was and what I wasn’t, feeling loss and guilt without the pleasure of newness or promise, like my situation was indescribably special. It wasn’t, but I didn’t know that. I barely knew I had a situation. The way I came to recognize it was in misrecognizing the pain. I began with that album to mourn my inability to mourn. I felt I needed something else, and I did. The woman on that cover looks like she needs a word from the Lord, but might be the only person in the room, besides the camera.

“The archival photograph is a time-stamped, carceral text.”- Zoé Samudzi

This weekend I thought about prophecy and remembered Bevere’s book. Its basic argument is that if we do not learn to separate true from false, we will not know what God is saying, and without a vision we will perish. It is thick with talk of eradicating disease, pollutants, corruption, defilement; the story of Hagar and Ishmael is a metaphor for the ontological split between promise and flesh, or between the flesh which does or does not possess promise. Christians in Bevere’s account should be the paradigmatic racial scientists. A Christianity premised on distinctions, which can ultimately make none; Christianity as the police.

In 2005 Jus Allah released his solo debut album All Fates Have Changed. I found it enthralling. He opens by declaring that he is “beyond measure” and “supreme authority over the universe.” That felt good to sing along with, even though I knew he wasn’t talking about me. I was a young white dude in Manchester,New Hampshire, but I could pretend. He was “a runaway slave with back scars” and an “immaculate being.” The white devils who hurt him would come to be sorry. He promised to “release aggression��explode like atomic weapons…Go into deep spells of demonic possession.” He has words for all his enemies: “Y'all corny motherfuckers sound repetitive, it’s safe to say, I'm the smartest man that's ever lived. I am negative, I will kill a relative.” What else is Jus Allah? “pure darkness, sparkless, glitterless, imageless, but still infinitely limitless… placed on the planet just to cause problems… from the master race exactly, God of the planet, boss of the factory.” He is contradictory. He tells us that tomorrow never comes, and why it cannot: “My stomach got young dead orphans in it; I eat from trash cans at abortion clinics.”

“the blackened-not-blackened fetus is stuck—suspended between a blackness whose freedom cannot commence and cannot be withstood, a blackness that cannot be born and cannot be borne.” -Jared Sexton

Prophecy is the negotiation of power and knowledge which shape conditions for life in the world. Prophecy can be a matter of opening or closing possibilities. I do not want to undersell the apparent strangeness of the behaviors at the church services where I met God, nor the extent to which this strangeness was performance of a denial of difference. You could speak up in protest, directed towards the Other outside and in yourself. In the end, every word from God must be an affirmation, an encouragement.

This essay is not about prophecy but about my relation to it. I grew up knowing that meaning implies domination, and that man’s search for it required acceptance of roles of master and slave, of Man, that to resist domination required an end to the possibility of even provisional meaning. Prophecy could be a way of ensuring that everyone can live or determining who must not. The prophecy to which I found myself attracted was an aborted negativity. Negativity insofar as it recognized that things were wrong, but a negativity which ultimately aspired to be content with itself as God, to a heavenly place in the world whose gates could eventually be shut. Negativity as the problem which required the promise of prophecy to solve.

Prophecy was a way of denying the obvious: “a disaster's a disaster no matter what Christian language you drag it through.” It was like my divorce: a split produced by the desire for wholeness and the repression of an originary split. One thing I knew for sure was that I shouldn’t follow my own agenda, but instead God’s. One thing I could not have known is that God did not have one, and neither did I, and that if I could not have the split I thought I wanted, I could at least try to know the one I had.

“Our historic mission is to sanction all revolts, all desperate actions, all those abortive attempts drowned in rivers of blood.” -Frantz Fanon

How was I to know when God’s agenda came to earth? “Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” As a young child I was haunted by night terrors. Animals at night, outside my window, usually on the neighbor’s roof. I could not resist looking out the window at them. I was not afraid of what they would do to me. They just watched. I was afraid of them because of what they knew. White nightmares. I could not rest.

Everyone knows that immaculate conceptions are impossible, that they are only possible with God, and that the eventual experience of premature death is really another part of his plan. When something feels wrong, you may want a word from God. But prophecy is like an army of locusts. Who can endure it?

(What helped me write this: Amaryah Armstrong, Alex Haley, Gil Anidjar, other readers of Lacan)

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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 7 years ago

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8th December >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflection on Luke 1:26-38 for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: ‘Let what you have said be done to me’.

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 1:26-38

Gospel (USA)

Luke 1:26–38

Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.

Reflections (5)

(i) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

And/Or

(ii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

And/Or

(iii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

And/Or

(iv) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

And/Or

(v) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 5 years ago

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9th December >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 1:26-38 for The Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: ‘Let what you have said be done to me’.

Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 1:26-38

'I am the handmaid of the Lord'

Gospel (USA)

Luke 1:26–38

Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.

Reflections (2)

(i) Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

And/Or

(ii) Feast of the Immaculate Conception of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

0 notes

frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 6 years ago

Photo

8th December >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 1:26-38 for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary : ‘Let what you have said be done to me’.

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 1:26-38

'I am the handmaid of the Lord'

Gospel (USA)

Luke 1:26–38

Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.

Reflections (6)

(i) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

The scene in today’s gospel reading is very beautifully depicted in one of our stained glass windows in the sanctuary and also on the front of the altar below the stained glass. The annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary is one of those gospel scenes that has inspired artists down the centuries, stained glass artists, painters, carvers. Somehow they sensed the significance of this event in God’s dealings with humanity. This was the moment when God needed Mary’s consent to become the mother of his Son. God had chosen Mary for this hugely significant role. A great deal would depend on how Mary responded to this choice that God was making of her. God chose her out of all the women in history, this young teenage woman from a small village in the hill country of Judea during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. God’s choice of this one woman was a wonderful privilege for her but would also make great demands on her. At that moment, the whole human race desperately needed her to say ‘yes’ to God’s choice and God’s call. The gospel reading speaks of Mary as being ‘deeply disturbed’ by this visitation from God and full of questions, and, yet, in the end she lived up to humanity’s expectations, surrendering wholeheartedly to God’s choice of her, God’s call on her, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me’. She said ‘Yes’ to God, on all our behalf, for all our sakes. It was through Mary of Nazareth that we would receive the gift of Jesus from God.

That story in today’s gospel reading expresses the meaning of today’s feast of Mary’s ‘Immaculate Conception’. We are celebrating today Mary’s complete openness to God’s presence, her total responsiveness to God’s call. To say that Mary was immaculately conceived is to say that Mary was untouched by what we call original sin. There was no sin in her life from the first moment of her existence. Her life was one constant ‘Yes’ to God’s choice and call from her conception to her final breath. She allowed herself to be touched by God’s grace in a very complete way. She was ‘full of grace’, full of God. She was, in the full sense, a woman of God, and this made her a woman for others. According to the scene that follows today’s gospel reading, she gave herself in love to Elizabeth her older cousin for several months. She, of course, gave herself to Jesus, her son, and she let go of her precious Son so as to give him to us all. After her Son’s death and resurrection, she gave herself to his followers, the disciples. She was present with them at Pentecost when the Spirit of the risen Lord, the Holy Spirit, came down upon them, to empower them to be his witnesses to others. As a woman of God for others, we see in her the human person we were originally designed to be. In our second reading, Paul declares that God ‘chose us in Christ to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence’. Mary is the person God desires us all to be.

The story of Adam and Eve tells a very different story to the story Luke tells in the gospel reading. Adam had said ‘no’ to God’s choice and call, eating of the tree that was out of bounds. The break in his relationship with God led him to hide from God, and God had to call out after him, ‘Where are you?’ In hiding from God, he also hid from himself. Refusing to take responsibility for his actions, he blamed his wife Eve, ‘it was the woman’, and she in turn blamed the serpent, ‘the serpent tempted me’. For the author of the Book of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve was the human story. It is the story of us all. We are all prone to going out own way, turning away from God’s presence, God’s call, and, then, hiding from God, and, as a result, losing touch with our true selves and damaging our relationship with others. Yet, when that happens, the Lord continues to call after us, ‘Where are you?’ not in an accusing way but in a loving way. Jesus, Mary’s Son, declared that he had come to seek out and save the lost, which is all of us. Adam hid from God out of fear, but the Lord in the gospels constantly says to people, ‘Do not be afraid’. As Saint John says in his first letter, perfect love casts out fear.

Today’s feast reminds us that we have someone we can look to and be inspired by in our efforts to respond to the Lord’s choice of us and his call to us. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is also our mother. She knows the power of sin and what it can do to human lives; she saw what it did to her Son. She surrounds us with her intercession and prayer so that we can become the human person God desires us to be. That is why we can ask her with confidence to pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

And/Or

(ii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

And/Or

(iii) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary

And/Or

(iv) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

And/Or

(v) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

And/Or

(vi) Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

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