Today's Gospel, the woman in the crowd cried out because she heard the words of Jesus and
she saw him and heard him speak with power and authority and his words rang true in her
heart, not just in a natural way but in a supernatural way.
He was the voice of God, he was God and yet she saw him in his flesh.
So naturally in her enthusiasm and in her joy she yelled out this blessing of praise,
blessed is the womb that bore you and the breast.
At which you nursed, she as a woman acknowledged the great dignity of the one who had given
Christ the flesh and brought him into the world.
St. Augustine commenting on this passage says that when our Lord responds to her by saying
rather blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it, he doesn't mean to
demean what this woman has.
This is a very difficult story because in the scriptures and the scriptures say that
the mother of the children of the hockey club shouldn't volatility, but rather she wasn't
in her womb.
That's totallyvant.
Our Lord went into her womb and he starved her and left her to go along with him so that
he would come out of her womb home and struggled.
When we read that text we should remember the 수� Ihr Angelus.
far more important than even that,
which is the fact that our Blessed Lady said yes to God's will
and said it in such a profound and perfect way
that the Incarnation was the result.
In fact, St. Augustine says it would have benefited Our Lady very little
by conceiving Jesus in her womb
if she had not first conceived Him in her mind.
That's what he says.
She conceived Him in her mind before she conceived Him in her womb,
meaning she heard the Word of God, as our Lord said, and observed it.
And the Word bore fruit in her heart, in holiness.
And so what we see in the Divine Maternity
is really the fruitfulness of Our Lady's holiness.
The angel at the Annunciation said to Our Blessed Lady,
Hail, full of grace.
She was already full of grace.
Before the Incarnation.
And that fullness of grace overflowed
into the presence of Christ in her womb.
And so both these blessings are true,
but the one flows from the other.
The Incarnation flows from this fullness of grace.
And I think as we reflect on this,
we can remember that this is going to be true for all of us,
no matter who we are,
or what we might accomplish,
or what God's will may be for us.
The bottom line is that we fulfill God's will.
We don't need to be great or intelligent or successful.
Mother Teresa said,
God doesn't expect us to be successful.
He expects us to be faithful.
And that's the same thing that we're talking about here in the Gospel.
And I think this is something that we can reflect upon
in a very appropriate...
way today as we begin this march for life
in this very perilous time
in which we're battling so many things like FOCA and all the rest,
and things don't look all that great.
And we come here year after year after year,
walking, marching, praying,
and then going back to our homes to work for the end of abortion
and for the upbuilding of the culture of life.
And we go forward, it seems,
and then we get setbacks.
And some of the setbacks seem pretty grave.
In all likelihood, we could get some more pro-choice judges
in the Supreme Court,
which would put Roe v. Wade beyond the pale
for who knows how many years.
I mean, there's all these things
which if we looked at it purely from a human point of view,
we could be discouraged.
And...
And there's good reason for that.
But, you know, the gospel sends us a different message.
Our Lord's success is ultimately on the cross
and in the resurrection.
And it's really an upturning of everything that's expected.
Nobody expected the resurrection,
even though our Lord preached it.
Our Blessed Lady did,
but everyone else was surprised.
Even though our Lord kept saying it,
they looked upon...
the end as a defeat.
And they didn't expect there to be an Easter Sunday.
They saw Good Friday and they despaired.
They didn't expect Easter Sunday.
Our Lady did because she was pure.
Because she was holy.
Because in the end,
she was all about doing the will of God.
All about doing the will of God.
I've been reading a book the last few days
that I read a long time ago.
But...
It's called
He Leadeth Me by Father Walter Chiswick.
And it's a well-known book.
Father Chiswick died in Connecticut,
not far from where we live.
But he was a Jesuit.
And his whole desire from the beginning of his novitiate,
when he heard his superiors talking about the fact
that the Holy Father wanted the Jesuits to go to Russia
to start a mission,
his whole desire was to go to Russia
and be a missionary in Russia.
And...
And...
And he went even to Rome to study for...
Study Russian and the liturgy
and to celebrate the liturgy in Russian
and how to deal with the Russian people.
And he went to the Rusikon.
It's the seminary in Rome for the Russians.
And his whole desire was to make it to Russia.
It was a deep, interior, burning desire
that God had given him.
He knew it wasn't natural.
It was supernatural.
And then when he finally got stationed,
he wasn't stationed in Russia.
It was too difficult to work there.
It was too difficult to work inside of Russia.
So he was stationed in Poland.
And then the war occurred, World War II,
and Poland was invaded.
And suddenly, there were Soviets all around him
in the town that he was living in.
And eventually, he and another Jesuit
decided to go with a group of workmen into Russia.
They were going to work in a lumber company
for very little money.
But he disguised himself in this other priesthood,
and they went into Russia.
And as soon as he got into Russia,
he was filled with this supernatural joy,
and he knew that he was doing God's will,
and it was the goal of his life
that he felt that he had reached.
And when they actually got into the work camps
and began to work themselves
and to see what they could do,
they found that nobody that they talked to
wanted to talk about religion.
Everyone was afraid because of the Soviets.
And they did a lot of good things
among themselves.
They did a lot of good things among these people,
but they couldn't talk about religion.
And they knew if they did,
as soon as they did,
they would be arrested.
So month after month, this went on,
and he and his companion priest friend
felt as though everything that they had dreamed about
had come to naught.
And they felt like maybe they had been deceived
the whole time that they had desired to go to Russia.
And they became almost desperate.
They were looking for a way
to get out of the work camp
and go back to Poland
because they figured
that they could do more work in Poland.
And Father Czyszek wrote this book,
He Leadeth Me,
because he had written a book before
called With God in Russia,
which was really about the history
of his time in Russia.
Eventually he was captured
and he spent a long time in solitary confinement
and then in prison
and then 15 years in hard labor camps.
Real trauma.
But he wrote this history called
With God in Russia,
but he always wanted to write a spiritual book
about his experiences
and to tell people about what he learned
in his many years as a prisoner in Russia.
And so he wrote this second book called He Leadeth Me.
And he talks about his experience,
that initial experience in Russia
where he felt as though everything had gone wrong,
everything had gone wrong,
and that his whole vocation,
his whole desire to be a minister,
to be a missionary in Russia,
had come to naught.
And I'd like just to read a little bit of this.
The place that he was staying in was called Templa Agora.
He said,
Our dilemma at Templa Agora came from our frustration
at not being able to do what we thought
the will of God ought to be in this situation,
at our inability to work
as we thought God would surely want us to work.
Instead of accepting,
accepting the situation itself as his will.
It is a mistake easily made by every man,
saint or scholar,
church leader or day laborer.
Ultimately, we come to expect God
to accept our understanding
of what his will ought to be
and to help us fulfill that
instead of learning to see and accept his will
in the real situations in which he places us daily.
The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering
of all the prayers and prayers of God,
all the prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day
and who then acts upon it by accepting unquestioningly
and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day
as truly sent by God
has perceived with an almost childlike faith
the profound truth about the will of God.
To predict what God's will is going to be,
to rationalize about what his will must be
is at once a work of human folly
and yet the subtlest of all things.
It is a work of human folly.
It is a work of human folly.
It is a work of human folly.
It is a work of human folly.
It is a work of human folly.
It is a work of human folly.
The plain and simple truth is that his will
is what he actually wills to send us each day.
The trick is to learn to see that,
not just in theory or not just occasionally
in a flash of insight granted by God's grace,
but every day.
Each of us has no need to wonder about
what God's will must be for us.
His will for us is clearly revealed
in every situation of every day.
If only we could learn to view all things
as he sees them and sends them to us.
And when he came to this conclusion,
he and his priest friend talked about it
and immediately everything changed.
Not so much the situation in which they worked,
but their interior spirit
and their ability to see God's providence
in the situation in which they found themselves.
And then as they recognized
that, they were able to become God's instruments
even in that situation.
But it was all about accepting God's will.
And it's a really very simple thing.
It's almost like it's so simple you can't explain it.
You know, we've got to accept God's will.
We all know that.
But, you know, it's a grace.
And Father Chiswick, at this moment
and at many moments during his time in Russia
where he was burdened,
with the frustration and pain of his situation,
which involved, like I said,
solitary confinement and interrogation
and many things like this.
It was at those moments when he recognized
that he was doing God's will,
even in that situation,
that the burden left his shoulders
and he understood God's providence
and was able to move forward.
And that's true for all of us.
No matter where we are in our spiritual life
or in our society,
or in our situations at home
or where we are in the pro-life movement,
the will of God is now.
And God's providence is now.
And it's a matter of our discovering that.
Yes, we have to work.
We have to do whatever we can
to protect human life.
But we can never get distracted by our activity
or by our frustrations or by our crosses
into thinking that somehow,
somehow God's providence and his will is not with us.
The problem is, of course,
as Father Chizik implied in the passage that I read,
is that we don't like what's happening.
And it's not our way.
It's not the way that we would choose for ourselves.
None of us would choose for more babies to die.
We don't choose that.
We're choosing against it.
And it seems like the tide is against us.
But nevertheless,
it is our own acceptance of God's will
that is ultimately the key.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe had a rule of life
that he wrote for himself.
And one of the rules of life
was a Latin phrase from the Fathers of the Church,
which is very simple.
Again, very simple,
not so easy to put into practice.
Ajay quote Ajiz,
do what you are doing.
Which means,
the moment that we have right now is God's will.
The past is gone.
And it's gone forever.
There's nothing we can do about it
except entrust it to the mercy of God
and learn from our mistakes.
The future may never come.
We may never see the future tomorrow.
There's nothing we can do about it as well.
Of course, we've got to plan and be responsible.
But from a spiritual point of view,
all we have is right now.
And this is what we have to consecrate to God.
We have to accept God's will now.
We have to understand that His providence
is with us now,
today,
and do the best that we can
to give this day,
in all of its joys and frustrations,
to give this day to God.
I tell a story when I give this homily,
or one like it,
about,
there's these stories about religious
who entered the novitiate
and became discouraged
because just like everything else,
when you get to where you always wanted to go,
it's never exactly,
what you expected it to be.
And sometimes it's much different
than you would have expected it to be.
And this novice was ready to leave.
So he went to his superior and he said,
I've had it, I'm done, I'm leaving.
I'm packing my bags and I'm going today.
And his superior said,
just wait, give it one more day
and we'll talk tomorrow.
And so he came back the next day and he said,
I'm done, I'm finished, I'm packing my bags,
I'm going and there's nothing you can say to stop me.
And he said, just wait,
give it one more day.
And that went on for years between this,
you know, or not years, he was a novice,
but it went on for a long time
until he recognized that God's will
was there for him.
That was his vocation
and the grace was there.
But if we follow Christ,
if we follow the Blessed Mother,
if we have the purity of heart
that our Blessed Lady had,
if we are to receive the blessing
that our Lord gave to her,
rather blessed are those who hear her,
hear the word of God and kept it,
then it's going to be a matter
of accepting the cross.
And if the cross is really the cross for us,
it's exactly that thing that we don't want.
The cross isn't something
that we would choose for ourselves,
even if it's penitential or difficult.
The cross is the last thing
that we would ever want.
That's the cross.
And sometimes if we are open to God's grace,
we will see that.
We will recognize,
that the thing that we want to get rid of,
most of all,
is the thing that our Lord is asking us to bear.
And it's this thing more than anything else
that is going to be fruitful.
This is the message of Christ.
If we want to change the world,
if we want to change people's attitude,
it has to be our own attitude that changes.
It has to be our own soul
that is transformed.
Today, in one of the stops,
I had a couple of conversations.
One woman wanted to give me
a talk about abortion.
She had questions about what about a woman
when she's raped and all that.
But really all she wanted to do
was lecture me.
I couldn't get in a word edgewise.
And then another gentleman came up
and he asked us what we thought about Obama.
I don't want to get political here,
but I just want to illustrate something.
And he said,
well, he's not pro-life.
We talked to him about that.
And he said,
he's not pro-life.
He says, really?
He's pro-choice?
We said, yes.
You didn't know that?
And he said,
no, I didn't know that.
But, you know,
I hope that he's going to change things.
I don't know what he's going to change,
but I hope he's going to change things.
So what do you say?
What can you say in a situation like that?
You know,
there are a lot of things that we can do.
But unless people want abortion to end,
unless they want it,
unless they're willing to make choices
that will actually end it,
it's not going to end.
We don't want abortion to end enough.
We don't want pro-life politicians enough.
We don't want it.
That's the problem.
And the only thing that is going to make people want it
is the change of their hearts.
And the most that we can do in that regard
is to change ours.
And if we have received enough enlightenment to be here,
then we have received enough enlightenment
to go the next step
and take our Lord completely seriously
in terms of doing God's will
and picking up our cross
and carrying it.
That's what we do in the Mass.
That's what we celebrate in the Mass.
That's what we memorialize in the Mass.
That's what we solemnize in the Mass.
It's our own union with Jesus and Mary
in the mystery of our Lord's sacrifice.
And it's bringing our hearts to the altar
that counts most of all.
That's what's going to change the world in the end.
I'm not suggesting that the actions
that we perform and the good works
that we do in the pro-life movement
are unnecessary or inessential.
They are not.
They are not.
But we will be more effective
in the apostolic works that we perform
if we are holy.
That's the bottom line.
We have got to be holy.
The crisis, more than anything else,
is what Father Rutler has called it,
a crisis of sanctity.
A crisis of sanctity.
So as we celebrate this Holy Mass,
let us ask our Blessed Lady
to purify our hearts
and make us consumed with this desire
to do God's will
and to see it everywhere we go,
every day that we live,
and know that God's providence is there for us
to accept His will,
to carry our cross,
and to offer a sacrifice that is pleasing to Him
in union with His Son
and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.