Introduction
As we reflect on our following of Christ as missionaries of His redemptive love, we recall with gratitude that “cloud of witnesses” who have preceded us and continue to inspire us with the example of their life. Today we turn our thoughts to Mary, that unique individual who played such an important role as the Mother of Jesus. The Church holds her up for all Christians to imitate as our model of faith. Christians of all cultures and in the most varied places have a special devotion to her. We look to her today as a fellow pilgrim who has much to teach us and who inspires us by her example.
During this retreat I have attempted to indicate some key elements in living a Precious Blood Spirituality. I hope that through all the reflections and your personal prayer, that you were able to put together a spirituality which will help you to be faithful to the mission of witnessing to God’s Redemptive love as you walk in solidarity with the poor and suffering of our world.
Openness to God
Mary is a good example of a contemplative person. She continually meditates on God’s Word and is completely open to be formed by it. Ecce! Here I am Lord, to do Your Will. She let herself be led by the Lord’s Will even when it was a mystery she did not fully comprehend, even when it was challenging. Fiat! To accept the Announcement of the Angel was to embark on an adventure of faith that is mind-boggling. And yet she was totally disposed and available to accept God’s Will for her and at many times during her life, would sit in awe before the mystery as it unfolded around her, trying to discern what it was that was happening and what God wanted of her. Mary was indeed a contemplative but in no way disconnected from the life around her. Her meditation on the Word of God led her to an ever-deepening commitment and involvement in the Mystery which overshadowed her. Her contemplation led her to involvement and to place her entire life at the service of God’s Plan and at the service of others. It was this capacity for meditating on God’s Word and for discerning in it a mission that moved Jesus to pronounce those somewhat mysterious words to the crowds who had announced that his Mother and brothers were outside waiting for Him. “But who is my Mother? And, who are my brothers? THOSE WHO HEAR THE WORD OF GOD AND PUT IT INTO PRACTICE, THEY are my Mother and my brothers!”
The Visitation
Having said this, let us now turn to the account of the Visitation taken from the Gospel of Luke. In this beautiful narration of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth we discover a vivid example for living a missionary spirituality.
“During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah , where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth
And Mary said: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my savior.
For he has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.
The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him.
He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.
He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped Israel
according to his promise to our fathers, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."
Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.”(1:39-56)
We can discover in this beautiful text many of the elements of a spirituality for mission. What light can the story of the Visitation give to our understanding of such a spirituality? We discover certain key aspects:
· Characterized by self-forgetfulness , Other-Oriented
She had had a very unique and overwhelming spiritual experience. The announcement of having been chosen to be the Mother of God was unexpected and troubling, to say the least. And she was also told that her cousin, Elizabeth, was expecting! Even though she was living her own experience, she embarks on a missionary journey, rushing from Galilee to Judea to be with her cousin.
In spite of what is happening in HER life, Mary focuses on her cousin Elizabeth and her needs! She shows a stunning generosity. Today’s society centers on taking good care of ourselves! We are called not to become so self-absorbed. The edicts of self-fulfillment. To be self-assertive regarding our own need. Today, the psychology of self-fulfillment becomes the basis for holiness!
Missionary spirituality asks of us a profound and generous self-forgetfulness. If we are to find God, we are first to see God in others and in their needs. Everything we need will be given to us if we seek first God’s Reign. If we lose our life for others, we will gain it. If we seek to gain our life, we will lose it. This is the dynamics of life and death in the Paschal Mystery. Our prayer is more about others and their needs, than about our own.
As we read the Scriptures and follow in Mary’s footsteps, we see this same attitude of “Other-Centeredness” displayed at the Wedding Feast of Cana (Jn 2). While the guests were too busy enjoying the good food and abundant wine at the party, the ever-attentive Mary was concerned that the wine was going too quickly and would soon run out. What an embarrassing moment that would be for the newly weds! She would insist that her Son do something about the situation, even in the face of His initial hesitation.
This attitude of Mary, this other-centeredness contains a lesson for religious life today. We can apply its lessons when reflecting on our Congregational Charism. If we try to hold on to it and preserve it in some kind of Pandora’s Box, under lock and key, so as not to lose it, we will only succeed in watching it die! If we are to be re-birthed and see the charism take root and flourish again in new ways and in new cultures and circumstances, we must be willing to take the risk of giving it away! We must share it with the lay people, we must find our specific contribution to the building of the Reign of God in our Church. It is giving it away, that it will be multiplied, as Jesus reminds us in the Parable of the Talents!
We are not in community to form a “mutual admiration society.” We are in it for others. We are communities in mission and for mission. We do not seek gain nor fame, but are about building God’s Reign!
· A spirituality with serviceat its core
The heart of apostolic spirituality is service … the ministry we render. We don’t withdraw from ministry to see the spiritual. We do not seek to balance the two: they are one. What we do for others we do both for and to the Lord. Why can we not see our work, our ministry, as the very core, the substance, of our prayer? If our ministry is the way in which we lay down our lives for others – which is, Jesus tells us, the greatest love – then how can our ministry not be the very core of our prayer? We need to become contemplatives-in-action, as a possible way of praying for a pilgrim of compassion. The world, human reality, people are seen as a Temple
· And a profound sense of urgency that brings Christ to those who need him
Mary went “in haste.” There is an urgency here. She sets off in haste, with an urgency to be there! Apostolic spirituality implies a passion for mission, a zeal to be about God’s business. An urgency for the Reign of God “eats us up.” In the expression of Joan Chittister, it is like a “fire burning in our bellies.” We shouldn’t fret about tomorrow, spend so much time worrying about the future, whether there will be one or not, whether our communities will survive, whether our remaining institutions will weather the test of time. An apostle is concerned about today! As someone once said: Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it is called “present.” This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice!Concentrate on today and pour yourselves into it with zest. Ministry must be a fire in our heart that seeks to spread fire on earth. Just as we cannot accept the Gospel with complacency, so we cannot serve it in a complacent way. We must have a spirituality that is alive, driving us and consuming us. “Woe to us if we do not evangelize!” Woe to us if we drag our feet about communicating God’s Redemptive Love to those who are thirsting for it and have not yet experienced it!
· Bringing Christ to the Needy
In visiting her cousin Elizabeth, Mary takes her Son, whom she is carrying in her womb, into the domestic terrain, into the family and home, into the rhythm of normal daily routine, into the concreteness of family life with its joys and sufferings, anxieties and all those little things which make life meaningful.
Like Mary we are to bring the Lord with us wherever we go, to bring him to light. We also realize that we will find him already present wherever we go. God is already there. We are to make the Lord manifest, present, and visible through ministry. Apostolic spirituality is always incarnational. We bring our God and find our God, alive and active, wherever we go. And we are open to receive. We are likewise transformed and called to conversion by the Christ we discover wherever we go. Apostolic spirituality will focus on the presence of the Lord in ourselves, in our ministry, and in those to whom we minister. We will find the Lord marvelously incarnate in the ministry itself (“I will be with you always, everywhere!”). Contemplation-in-action will heighten our awareness of that presence! “Give us eyes to see and ears to hear!” becomes our daily petition. If the Lord lives in us and if the Lord comes to us in those whom we serve, then our spirituality can exist in the noise of the world as well as in the quiet of our hearts.
· A spirituality built on faith sharing
Mary and Elizabeth: a wonderful example of faith sharing! They proclaim to each other the working of God in their lives. Faith sharing is a key element of apostolic spirituality. The revelation of God goes on in each of our lives. Our human history becomes salvation history. God does great things in each of us. Faith sharing is a meeting of believers in which each articulates the work of God in us. Each life becomes a book of revelation. A deepened awareness of God in each person flows from this faith sharing: praise, thanksgiving, adoration, contrition, and petition … We learn to live reflective lives in God’s presence and to hear the Lord speak to us from the lives of others. In community and with others, we walk as the disciples on the road to Emmaus. We share our stories and reflect on our experiences in the light of the Word of God in order to discover the living Word trying to break forth in the bread of our lives that we share and the common cup of suffering and blessing that we drink.
We are, like Mary, “pregnant with the Word of God” which we share with others. But we are also aware that wherever we tred, we stand on sacred ground which is also pregnant with God’s presence. We walk humbly and with respect.
· Bursting with joy
The Visitation is one of the Joyful Mysteries. The story bursts with joy. The baby leaps in Elizabeth Elizabeth
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one who brings good tidings, announcing peace, bearing good tidings, announcing salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’ “ (Isaiah 52:7)
Our apostolic spirituality must be characterized by joy. As Teresa of Avila prayed God to spare us from “long-faced saints.” The world is a gloomy enough place without people who supposedly live by faith and hope adding to the somberness. A sense of joy and humor is the clearest sign of the perspective on life that faith should afford us.
We are called to be missionaries of hope. As we venture into the pain and woundedness of this world, and journey into the lives of the poor and suffering, we are there to share and to be a presence of Hope. As compassionate pilgrims we need to be nourished and strengthened in our own hope by prayer and the Eucharist and by “remembering” that cloud of witnesses who were faithful and who have reached the goal. We are “bearers of Good News”, bringing “sight to the blind, freeing prisoners, and proclaiming a year of jubilee.”
The dialogue of these two holy women, is preserved in prayer. There is a mutual outpouring of faith and love, an explosion of joy and peace, and a sharing of the goodness of God in their lives and the thrill of pure human excitement.
Her journey across the mountains, carrying the Word incarnate in her, becomes a parable of the journey of faith. Her Magnificat a great song of pilgrimage!
Conclusion
It was not always easy to live her mission. It was always smooth sailing. Indeed the Prophecy of Simeon(Lk 2:33-35) surely often resounded in her mind and heart as she journey, following her Son in silence and in fidelity.
· The misunderstanding of Joseph and of the townspeople when she became pregnant.
· The concern of not finding a place where she could have her Child.
· The flight into Egypt
· The strange words Jesus said to her when she and Joseph had found Him in the temple after three days of heart-wrenching anguish and anxiety.
· The sorrow she felt as the crowds Jesus had such compassion for began to turn on Him and cry out for His death.
· As she stood at the foot of the Cross watching her son in His agony.
· And holding the life-less body of her crucified Son in her arms after He was lowered from the Cross, contemplating so much suffering and cruelty in an attempt to decipher its mystery.
But Mary drank from the Cup of Suffering and in her attitude of contemplation before the mystery, drank it all in with trust and courage. She, like the Lamb of Revelation is on foot. She is the woman standing at the foot of the Cross. She is not overwhelmed by it all. God surely knows what He is doing!
She walks along side of us as a compassionate pilgrim and instrument of God’s Redemptive Love. She is our inspiration and our special intercessor before her Son.
These are some of the elements that comprise an apostolic spirituality, or a spirituality for mission.They must be lived out and infleshed in the different Congregational charisms. To live such a spirituality calls for the breaking off from all that which impedes following Christ more closely, living in communion with Jesus and penetrating into His mystery. It asks of us that total availability of Elisha who, when called, sacrificed his oxen (his livelihood) and burnt his tools for firewood (cf. I Kings 19:15-21). We put our lives at the total disposition of the service of God’s Reign and of experimenting and witnessing to the fraternity of the disciples.
We too, inspired by her example wish to say daily our:
· Eccomi! Here I am!
· Fiat! Be it done unto me!
· Magnificat! And sing our praises to the Lord!
Mary can help us to cultivate an apostolic, missionary spirituality. We pray that she might spark the fire for mission in each of us in order to be alive with passion for the Reign of God. May she guide us as we establish our priorities and urgencies in our lives and help us to focus not on ourselves but on mission.
And, finally, may Mary lead us to those places where we are most needed in today’s society, to the needy whose cries are calling to us and who await with expectation the Word of hope that we carry within us, as Missionaries of the Precious Blood, that Blood “which speaks of the greatest joy of all: that of knowing that we are loved by God.”
Mary, Our Lady of the Precious Blood, inspire and guide us on our journey as living Chalices of Christ’s redemptive love.
Barry Fischer, C.PP.S.
The Visitation
many of them, to be with aunt Elizabeth,
whose womb also swelled with surprise
You, the woman of youth and vigor,
weary from the long road’s rigors,
wondering still about the mystery within
weary from the child kicking inside,
(already a hint of wildness in him)
The two of you, meeting at the door,
weeping and laughing at the same time,
each one gasping at the other’s fertility
And leaping between and among you,
those two frisky fetuses, yet to be born,
the prophet and the One to be proclaimed
Did they feel the love of your hospitality?
Did they swim and sway with your voice?
Did they listen with tiny, eager ears to all
that passed between the two of you
in the days and weeks that swiftly passed,
growing and feeding on your rich love?
I don’t know which I’d have wanted more,
to be in one of those glorious filled wombs
or in the house of that woman-blessed place
--Joyce Rupp, Out of the Ordinary, p. 128
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