Wednesday 8 September
(Feast) Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary • Romans 8:28-30
To look at a newborn baby always brings a sense of awe and mystery. We are touched by the miracle of new life before us – tiny, complex and dependent but pure and vigorous. We can gaze at the baby’s face and wonder what life will bring to this little person, what joys and pains will carve lines of laughter and sorrow in these soft and perfect features.
Today we celebrate the birth of Mary. The date and circumstances of her birth are shrouded in obscurity. But who can have imagined, when her relatives and friends looked at the infant Mary over two thousand years ago, what life would hold for this precious child? Who can have thought that the salvation of humankind would be made possible by her selfless ‘yes’? Who, apart from God himself, can have visualized her standing at the foot of the cross, witnessing the death of her beloved son?
For only our heavenly Father knows the future. In his love for us, he does not burden us with foreknowledge of what is to come – but he does have a plan for us. And his plan is perfect. Paul’s teaching in today’s reading speaks of God’s mercy and abundant provision for all those who love and seek him. Neither our intellect nor our language is able to encompass the relationship between God’s plan and predestination and our free will, but we know for certain that we are free – amazingly so, frighteningly so. Mary, too, had the free will common to all humanity. Thus the incarnation, and the salvation of humankind, was held in the balance in the moments between the angel’s message in the annunciation and Mary’s acquiescence. Yet even though Mary could have said ‘no’, her answer was ‘yes’ – and God always knew that it would be. It was a consent in humility and utter selflessness but one that expressed trust and confidence in her heavenly Father in the most inspiring way.
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, you have given the world its true light, Jesus, your Son – the Son of God. You abandoned yourself completely to God’s call and this became a wellspring of the goodness which flows forth from him. Show us Jesus. Lead us to him. Teach us to know and love him, so that we too can become capable of true love and be fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world.’ (Pope Benedict XVI)
Micah 5:1-4 or Romans 8:28-30
Psalm 12(13):6-7 • Matthew 1:1-16, 18-23
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