THE WORD AND THE FEAST
September 8, 2021: Celebrating the Birthday of Our Mother
Micah 5: 1-4; Matthew 1: 1-16, 18-23
The Birthday of our Blessed Mother brings home to us a typically Christ-ian message: the message of being chosen from all eternity, as St. Paul affirms in his letter to the Ephesians (1:4). "God has chosen you before the foundation of the world." God chose Mary from eternity and prepared her to be the worthy dwelling place for God's Son. That is why the Angel greeted her with those significant words: 'Hail! Full of Grace!' She, who was so full of Grace and who bore the fullness of Grace within her, becomes for us the bearer of grace. She was destined and chosen and God deigned to share with her God's glory.
Mary's role as the destined and chosen one, reminds each of us of our status as chosen children destined to share in the glory of the Lord. When Mary was born, the climax of God's salvation plan was born.. of course, it was yet to reach its climax. Her greatness lies in the fact that she cooperated with God and it was that trait which led her to the glory that she enjoys today - lifted up by the Lord himself. Everyone of us is called to that same glory and we are faced with the same demand: that we cooperate with the Lord in the eternal plan, where we have a specific and irreplaceable role to play.
The scourge of the world today consists in the fact that it has lost the sense of the eternal. All that matters is the here and the now, the immediate and the instant differences that people look for. This is the tendency that leads to evaluating a person in terms of usefulness, looking at everything from the point of view of gain or loss and judging everything with the criterion of utility. Reading through the genealogy presented to us, we may think it just followed one after the other -but how long a wait it was for humanity, and that is the preparationg towards eternity! In God's plan everything has its place, everyone has one's proper place and role!
Let this feast of our Blessed Mother bring health to our mind and body! It is so much needed today: with the pandemic and the post pandemic effects affecting not merely our physical health but also our mental and spiritual wellbeing, may our blessed mother, celebrated as the Mother of Good Health in India, bring sanity and sanctity to our spirit and soul, that we may be fully alive, sharing and spreading the glory of God - that is what we are chosen for and that is what we are destined for! MAy God be praised in God's angels and saints! Ave Maria!