When Father Joseph was novicemaster, before
he met a candidate, he would ask the vocation director, “Has he fallen in
love?” In other words, does he have a heart that’s available and ready for
love, a heart that will know what it’s like to be in love? Surely Mary’s heart
was ready; her heart formed by the faithful love of family, the love she spoke
each day in the shema – promising to love Lord, her God, with
all her heart, with her whole being, and with all her strength. More recently
her virgin heart has opened with tender love for Joseph. Today we
celebrate this heart ready for love. We call this event Annunciation, but
truly it is not an announcement at all but a request, better, a proposal. For
we are witness in this scene to the pursuit of love, the God of love seeking
love in response. And as God’s total outpouring is met by the loving openness
of Mary, two loves are made one. Heaven is wedded to earth, and Mary becomes
the Ark of this new Covenant. When you love, you are always waiting to
hear what the beloved wants. You learn the habit of finding yourself by giving
yourself away; trusting that the one you love will not manipulate or abandon
you. This self-gift and mutual exchange are the secret we all were
made for. We celebrate today because together Mary and God found
this secret together.
But how? Mary is after all so small and
insignificant, the unlikeliest – young, poor, without status, an unmarried girl
from a backwater. She has nothing and is nothing at all; a real nobody, but she
is perfect for God. God is hooked, it’s his golden opportunity. God has been
searching relentlessly, and he is ravished by the delicate beauty of Mary of
Nazareth. She is after all the perfect match for a God who is always captivated
by what is humble and small, ordinary. God loses himself in her; God can’t help
himself; for he always goes to the lowest place. We can well imagine
God’s joy at his discovery; for his relationship with Mary will allow God to do
what he has long dreamed of doing. Here at last is one who will not hide
from him like Adam in the underbrush. In Mary God at last finds one who is not
embarrassed at her nothingness, the stuff that can scare us half to
death.[1] She lets it be; she has nothing to hide.
And amazingly, Mary’s smallness is room
enough for God’s immensity. God’s condescension is so loving and tender
that Mary’s humanness is not obliterated but exquisitely enhanced.[2] There in the mystery of her emptiness and
nothingness, God finds ample space for his total outpouring, which becomes
forever a possibility for us as well through her perfect availability to God’s
self-gift. Mary as Godbearer, Theotokos, allows us to be Godbearers
with her.
Through Mary, in Mary God can finally be
what he could not be without her. She says how, she says yes, why not. And so,
she becomes accomplice to God’s loving subterfuge. Through her God can sneak
through enemy lines[3], like a warrior eager to conquer sin and death. God will
depend on our cooperation too in order to break the bonds of sin and
selfishness.
Still we may want to insist like Peter,
“Leave me Lord, I am no match for you.” But God is not going anywhere. He
continues to pursue us, as he pursued Mary, noticing us, lost in our isolation
and confusion especially now. He rushes toward us to take us to himself. Adam
may hide, Peter protest; Mary simply welcomes the mystery of God’s
advance. She lets God have his way; she invites us with her to understand
our emptiness and confusion as God’s opportunity. Too much has been
happening. We all can feel it in our gut. But in this time of our intense
vulnerability, when we can't pretend or hide, God in Christ may have more
unrestricted access to our hearts than ever. If we understand the reality of
his loving pursuit, we will see it’s God’s golden opportunity. He takes our
flesh to be with us and mercy us. He is here begging at the low door of
our humanity, longing to make his home in our empty, fearful hearts as he
did in Mary’s.
God’s pursuit, his desire to communicate
the depth of his love for us will be most clearly painted in the crucifixion.
There we will see where God’s desire for our flesh and its liberation has led
him. We are worth so much to God that he became human in order
to suffer with us “in an utterly real way - in flesh and blood…in all
human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that
suffering with us; hence consolation is present in all
suffering, the consolation of God's compassionate love- and so the star of hope
rises [4] (for us through Mary). Again, this morning she leans
over and whispers to us as she did at a wedding in Cana: "Do whatever he tells you.
Let him find you here in your nothingness and emptiness and fear now more than
ever, for nothing is impossible for God. I know this for sure." Let us
listen to her and go to him for all we need.
Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, c. 1438-47, fresco, 230 x 321 cm, Convent of San Marco, Florence.
