WORD of the Vine

Today, let us celebrate the birthday of Our Lady with renewed practical zeal. We want to celebrate the impact of her life but even more, celebrate what her life reveals and offers to us as a renewed reality here and now. Mary is often called “the Mother of the Living” because she shows us what is freely offered to us in our human life. As the “New Eve” her conception and birth help us all be more aware of the fact that Jesus is the Son of the Father of both Heaven and Earth. Mary shows us that we don’t want to grow closer to God, more holy, by denying life here and now and moving into a “Catholic bubble” but by embracing all that we are body and soul, life now as a foretaste and bridge to heaven.
Like Mary, we want to move towards God with all that we are, our energies, our thoughts, feelings, desires and actions. We want to understand our faith, not as a process of following all the rules, of simply being orthodox, but rather, as a way of life where the fire of God bubbles up from inside us because we are made in God’s image. Mary knows deeper than anyone that God can be alive inside us. When the holy fire ignites within us, we become able to receive grace anew, as Mary did, and available to bring God’s healing living light to other people around us.
We want to ask ourselves, in pursuing truth, God, have we become hardened by orthodoxy rather than a living flame of its beauty. Think about this when you attend and engage the Mass or study the Faith. Are you more concerned with wearing a mantilla at Mass and doing more holy hours or do you seek to live fully the mission and vocation that God has given you?
We have to take what we experience alone with God and take it outward to the World. We each has received a unique unrepeatable mission that we received as seeds at the time of our conception and birth and as a summons that we each must bring to birth in the World. The World awaits our gift.Let us proclaim like Mary, on the celebration of her birthday, “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name…The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty” (Luke 1:49,53).
Let us make our lives a living prayer of mission by praying the prayer penned by Christopher West in his book, At the Heart of the Gospel: Reclaiming the Body for the New Evangelization:
Mary, set ablaze with God’s Eros, pray for us that we would not fear the Fire that Christ, your son, came to cast upon the earth. Teach us, how to burn.