I wonder what the
experience of pregnancy was like for Mary; the experience of having her barely
teenage body filled with new life, filled with Him who was Life itself. There’s an embodied experience there that I
can never know, and having spoken with so many friends who have born children,
I’ve come more and more to realize that in a way, none of us can know, as no
two women’s experience of pregnancy is the same.
But there’s
a spiritual experience that we can all know to which Mary invites us, one that
derives its liveliness from that embodied experience. In today’s Gospel, there’s only thing we read
that Mary did: “[She] kept all these
things, reflecting on them in her heart.”
If her body couldn’t be filled with Jesus’ body anymore, her heart could
still be filled. She could fill up her
heart with all the marvels God had presented her with and turn those over and
over, chewing the cud of wonder, reflecting in her heart. Everyone else who heard about it reacted with
amazement, and that’s a good reaction, but Mary seems determined to go deeper,
to cast out into the deep by keeping and reflecting in her heart.
In his exhortationon Joy, Pope Francis celebrates Mary under this title: “Virgin of listening and
contemplating,” that’s how he addresses her at one point. She knew she was surrounded by a world
touched by the loving, redemptive action of God. She knew that if she took in all that was
happening around her, if she truly listened, God had a life-giving word to
implant in her heart, and that would grow and blossom just as her baby boy
had. Her contemplation could be as fruitful
as her pregnancy.
And in
her motherly care, she can help us realize that our contemplation can be
to. We can be filled with the
electrifying power of God if we listen, truly listen, trusting that we are
living lives enthused with grace. In
that same exhortation, Pope Francis recognizes that he’s writing to people
zealous to do good, but counsels us: “Often it is better simply to slow down,
to put aside our eagerness, in order to see and listen to others, to stop
rushing from one thing to another and to remain with someone.”
To take
the time to truly listen and contemplate is to make room in hearts: room for a
stranger, room for a guest, room for God.
And as we listen, we participate with the God who hears our cries, our
laughter, our sighs, who hears us more intimately than we can even hear
ourselves. We dare to listen, because we
know we are heard. We know we can turn
to God, with our loftiest delight or our deepest longing. And we can help others to know that too if we
incarnate it, if we consent to let Christ be born in us, the fruit of our
contemplation, a listening ear to lend to a sighing world.
The word
“obedience” means to listen deeply. Mary
shows her obedience to the Law of Moses in having her boy circumcised; she
shows her obedience to the angel in calling him Jesus; she shows her obedience
to the still small voice, disclosed ever so furtively in our lives, in keeping
all these things and reflecting on them in her heart.
We can
take a cue tonight from our secular calendar, that invites us to reflect on the
year past and open ourselves to the graces to be received in the year to
come. The question is: what’s being born
in each of our hearts? What’s nourishing
that growth? What fills us? Because, God will fill our hearts with Jesus
that he might be born in us.
Listen. Be still. Each of our lives has so much worth
contemplating in, because they bear the fingerprints of grace.
Let’s
close with the Pope’s prayer, as Mary helps us learn to listen:
Virgin of listening and contemplation, Mother
of love, Bride of the eternal wedding feast, pray for the Church, whose pure
icon you are, that she may never be closed in on herself… Mother of the living
Gospel, wellspring of happiness for God’s little ones: pray for us. Amen.
Alleluia!
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