Full of grace: Maria is her name.

No matter what belief system we profess, mothers are special creatures, aren't they?  If we are one of the lucky ones who have had the experience of a loving and caring mother we probably have an extra special devotion to her. Our culture celebrates it with a special day of the year in honor of her.  If our mother is no longer with us, we may think of her on that day and we celebrate her life and her legacy in our own way. Some of us may visit her grave, or light a candle or place a rose in a vase in her honor or quietly contemplate her picture on our mantle or item she possessed that reminds us of a time when she was still with us. Humans find comfort in symbols and images that remind us the love of our mother.   When we love our mother, no one dares to speak ill of her. My own mother's name is Olga.  When I hear that name anytime, I can't help but think of the woman who created a peaceful home for me,  who baked cakes and let me lick the bowls,  who comforted me when I was scared, who framed my artwork on our living room wall, who constantly reminded me to be good and loving by showing me through her daily actions.  Because she is my mother, she is holy and humanly perfect...no one can ever convince me otherwise.

As a Catholic, our faith naturally allows us to transfer that same kind of devotion to the mother of our Lord. We realize the honor she was given as a gift by God himself.  A young Jewish woman freely said yes to God's invitation to be the Mother of the Messiah. This is celebrated in the Catholic faith and as any good Catholic, we celebrate as joyfully as we can! And because our Christian faith is about relationships, we celebrate as a large family in a gathering that we call "church". When we worship God at Mass, we thank him for choosing Mary and we are reminded of her special call to be Jesus' mother.

Thomas Merton wrote of Mary, "“The genuine significance of Catholic devotion to Mary is to be seen in the light of the Incarnation itself. The Church cannot separate the Son and the Mother. Because the Church conceived of the Incarnation as God’s descent into flesh and into time, and His great gift of Himself to His creatures, she also believes that the one who was closest to Him in this great mystery was the one who participated most perfectly in the gift. When a room is heated by an open flame, surely there is nothing strange in the fact that those who stand closest to the fireplace are the ones who are warmest. And when God comes into the world through the instrumentality of one of His servants, then there is nothing surprising about the fact that His chosen instrument should have the greatest and most intimate share in the divine gift.”

Merton provides us a beautiful image of Mary, as the one who was so close to the flame of love that she herself shared intimately in this gift to humanity.  She carried him in her womb (many theologians refer to her as the new ark of the covenant), nurtured him as he grew, and then participated in his ministry that ultimately led her to weep at the foot of his cross.  The Bible tells us that she being full of grace was there and it was there where Jesus told John, "behold your mother" after he had turned to his mother and said "woman, behold your son". In that moment, she became our mother too. (Jn 19: 26-27)

While in St. Peters in Rome, I marveled at the moving Pieta by Michelangelo. Here he interprets for viewers the moment when our mother held the tortured, limp body of her loving and innocent son after it was taken down from the cross.  He depicts a moment full of God's Grace in marble.  Our Christian faith compels us to ask for such grace. Do we dare ask for such an open heart, so FULL of grace, that would allow itself to break if that is God's will for us, having faith that it will not be destroyed?  A heart that is open to God's will that it would permeate our soul and allow us to be obedient so that we can be transformed to find God in all people, in all things, in every moment? A heart that calls us to eternal communion and an intimate relationship with our God? Do we dare? Such was the heart of our mother, Maria. Maria, like a good mother, shows us how it is possible.  This is what this sculpture seems to want us to contemplate.

 

 

It is no wonder that from the very beginning of Christianity every nation, every village, every where where the good news was taken and spread, where ever Christianity was active and alive there has been a devotion to our blessed Mother's heart .  In my own country of Cuba, she is celebrated for her heart of charity as  La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre.  (The Virgin, Our Lady of Charity.)

But always and simply, Maria is her name.  And so all Catholic mothers and fathers teach our children to yearn for such a humanly and graceful heart as we can find in her.  She demonstrates a love that  goes beyond nationality or race or politics or religion.  This is a mother who loves all of God's children equally and wants us all to love her son as she loves him and to have a personal relationship with him.

"Hail Mary Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen!"

What is best about humanity-God's love!

I was about to turn 6 years old when a great saint of our time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed his congregation with his message as to why he was against the Vietnam War. 

"A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing, unconditional love for all men. ........ I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. (Bold type is mine) This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of John: “Let us love one another, for God is love. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” "  (Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967.) 

Many years have gone by and yet I am touched by his sermon in particular this excerpt above. Seems like war is inevitable for every generation. President Obama declared a few days ago that we must punish the people of Syria for the evil that their government have committed against their own people and by going against the international pact that outlaws use of chemical warfare. There are many who argue against this idea. Listening to arguments for not striking I find they are usually grounded basically on  socio/political points: 1- It is not our responsibility nor our problem, so we should stay out of it.  2-We don't have unilateral support from the international community. 3-We can't afford it-it would cost us billions . 4- We're not 100% sure of what will happen if we do strike-it may escalate to where we may need to send soldiers to fight.

All reasonable arguments. I suppose that in the midst of contemplation a lot of us who are just plain people of good will, may have spent the last few days struggling on how we feel about this declaration by our President and our own arguments for whether we agree or not with him.  

Reading Dr. King's sermon reminds me that love "is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to the ultimate reality; a reality which means living in peace with our fellow brothers and sisters.  The 'somehow' in this phrase is powerful because it reminds me  that we can't reason this  type of love out, there is a mystery to it that we must accept in order to  understand this kind of love... a love that he assured his congregation would lead to true freedom, unity, fellowship,  and peace.

It takes courage for a spiritual leader to speak this kind of truth today, because it is not easy to swallow.  Many of us prefer a degraded  and consumer-ized kind of love.  We want love that we can see and touch because we want to posses it; we want to reason with it. Yet, Dr. Martin Luther King exhorts us to  focus on a Christian paradigm of love that permeates all our hearts, regardless of religion or nationality. A love that was lived perfectly but not without human suffering, in Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ's good news and testimony to the world is that men are capable of resisting evil and violence if they have faith in God's love. We must resist evil in order to experience love. Wars are inevitable when  attitudes of pride, power, greed, and vengeance are nourished and celebrated among ourselves.  We must constantly be looking inside ourselves and rejecting those evil attitudes in our daily lives so that God's love, which is not always practical nor reasonable,  can reign in our lives.

I imagine President Obama has reflected on the day he  received his Nobel Peace Prize award. The commission stated in 2009 why he deserved such high honor, "... His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."  

Obama accepted this award and gave a very inspiring speech where he  referred to the law of love, ".... Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil......The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached - their faith in human progress - must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.  For if we lose that faith - if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace - then we lose what is best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass."

And so as each of us contemplate the future, we must be careful to stay open to the law of love, and rid ourselves of attitudes that diminish  hope and or rejects a faith in our God of love. 

Dr. King upon receiving his own Nobel Peace Prize understood the call to be a peacemaker, its more than just work, it is a vocation that calls us to obedience to God's unreasonable kind of love, the kind that Jesus Christ exemplified. Here is an excerpt:

".... it was a commission--a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances. But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that he died for them?"

President Obama, let us not forget the One who calls us to love as He loved. Let us not lose faith in what is "best about humanity"!