In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus give
you his peace.
We celebrate Our Lady on Saturday, and the gift that she has been to each one of us here
in this chapel, and also during this year of faith, a special gift that she has brought
into our lives with both sanctifying grace, but also the promise of eternal life in Jesus
Christ.
The reading, the gospel reading that we had this morning is on the natural level, the
woman recognizing certainly the holiness of Jesus in her midst, and proclaiming also the
blessedness of his mother.
His mother must have been something extraordinary if this is her son, and indeed that's the
case.
But she's at the natural level with proclaiming both how she brought him forth and how she
nursed him.
And it gets at the mystery of the supernatural life, just like we have parallels where things
are explained in scripture on the natural level, and they raise us up to a divine level,
so too here.
St. Augustine has the very famous saying that Our Lady first conceived Christ, the word
in her heart, before she conceived him in her womb.
And he also will go on to say, if that wasn't the case, it would be to no avail.
It's a lot like the dynamic at the Last Supper, that if there was not the consent of our Lord
that this is my body, the suffering on Calvary would not have the kind of currency behind
it, the merit behind it, and it's a deliberate act, just the act of the will, the human will
of the Christ, and here the will of the Immaculate in conceiving the Christ.
So taking a look at the gift of faith, the catechism will talk about faith both.
As a gift and a human act, that is, it's something that we receive, and it's also something
that we respond to, and so it really bridges two realms, of course, it bridges the divine
to the human in our response.
The definition goes this way in the catechism, it's both a gift of God and a human act by
which the believer gives personal adherence to God who invites his response, and freely
assents to the whole truth that God has revealed, something we enter into.
It is this.
It is this revelation of God which the Church proposes for our belief in which we profess
in the creed, symbol of faith, celebrate in the sacraments the real touch of Christ, live
by right conduct that fulfills the two-fold commandment of charity, specified in the Ten
Commandments, and respond to in our prayer of faith.
Faith is both a theological virtue given by God as grace and an obligation, we don't
often think of it that way, it's an obligation which flows from the first commandment of
God, love the Lord God with all your heart.
And so, even the faith, we know it's an obedience, and that word obedience gets at this aspect
of hearing.
That's what we heard from our Lord, blessed are those rather that hear the word of God
and keep it.
It's by, of course, no means a contradiction, it's rather a sharpening, which is really
meant, just like the Samaritan woman in John 4, it's really meant to draw the woman into
faith.
And so, drawing her into the other level, it's a confirmation of what we've, you know,
what we know about the Blessed Virgin.
Mary in her blessedness, blessed as she was believed from the visitation,
St. Elizabeth, and the two instances in Luke 2.19 and 2.51
of how she kept the word of God and
cherished it in her heart, and a couple different instances of that.
The year of faith has given us also a document
from the Holy See, both the work of Pope Benedict and Pope Francis,
where there are different themes, and some of them are certainly
very recurring in the thought of Pope Benedict,
and one of them is the good soil. This is from Lumen Fidei, number 58,
the end of the document is regarding Our Lady in Faith,
and it says this, in the parable of the sower, St. Luke has left us
these words of the Lord about the good soil. These are the ones who
when they hear the word of God, again that element of hearing, hold it fast
in an honest and good heart, and bear much fruit with patient endurance. That's Luke 8.15.
In the context of
Luke's gospel, this mention of an honest and good heart, which hears and keeps the word,
those two things again, is an implicit portrayal of the faith of the
Virgin Mary. The evangelist himself speaks of Mary's memory, how she
treasured in her heart all that she had heard and seen, so that the word could bear fruit
in her life. So this theme of good soil is a lot like
the natural level with maternity, which we just heard in the gospel,
is also very revealing about the gift of faith. Why?
Because soil, of course, receives.
The seed, and the seed we know from Luke also is the word of God. And we can say that
when the seed is received, that's a conception. Just in
natural biology, there's a conception when the seed is received.
And so too, we conceive faith. And that
good soil is the immaculate human nature of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, without which we don't conceive anything.
And that's an important thing to kind of get
our minds around.
That just as Our Lady is necessary in history for the coming of the Christ,
without which, you know, what's the Latin?
Without which it's not going to happen.
I'm sorry. But nevertheless, so too with justification
that it's not going to happen without her. And that's
the gift that she's been given over to the soul. We can also think of how
preveniently she was given the grace through the American conception
before the actual historical working out of the Redemption
on Calvary. So too, those who have been given much. Much
will be expected. What does she be given? The greatest of all graces
beforehand. And so she also gives beforehand
to the soul the grace of
being able to respond to God's grace, both through being and also through act.
And the gift that she is in that kind of getting to
the soil. The soil also, of course, once
it receives the seed, which we can say is again a conception, then it's taken
up into the seed. The seed is going to appropriate that soil, which
of course the word did in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, taking from
assuming a human nature from her
so that of course could suffer for our sins.
And so too, this being taken up into a greater
reality is something that Lumen Fidei, both in the context of soil
but also
the Holy Father is perhaps right, we can say that in the Blessed Virgin Mary we find something
I mentioned earlier in the document, namely that the believer is completely taken up
into his or her confession of faith, entering into a greater reality.
This is, in the language of St. Maximin
and Mary Colby, what we can think of as a transubstantiation
being taken up into the divinity
and consequently the capacity to be
divinized. And that's the reality of the
gift of faith in the heart of the believer.
And it's a great gift, of course it's Marian, and again we think of the
nature with the Immaculate Conception being conceived
in the womb of St. Anne, the level of
being, but also in the gift of act
that is to say that Our Lady's faith at the Annunciation
we really do get taken up into.
That's the summit of all created love.
And so this day and also in this year of faith we give thanks.
It always opens up the heart more and more, but we should really try to enter into it.
You know, I'm just saying the Hail Mary.
Blessed are you among women.
They used to, back in the Middle Ages, that was a real call for joy
rather than just kind of repeating it. And so too let it be for us.
Blessed are you among women. Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus,
the greatest gift of love in the world.
In the womb of the Virgin Mary, in the name of the Father and of the Son,
of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Amen.