Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mother Marisa)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


We all learn at a certain point in our lives that it is dangerous to give ourselves wholly to anything or anyone. Maybe it was the first blush of unrequited love that broke our adolescent heart; or maybe it was the failure of a parent to care for us when and in the way that we needed them. Whatever the case, we have all learned this hard lesson — sometimes in a moment — from the school of life: Love hurts. 


There are some of us, though, that took that lesson more literally than others. Much has been said about people born between 1985 and 2010. Millennials and Gen Z are statistically the most depressed and least connected out of every demographic. Regardless of the fact that we have instant access to one another’s thoughts and feelings because of texting and TikTok, we are significantly less likely to have close friendships, to get married, to want children — for many and complex reasons, I’m sure; though one common explanation is this: We’ve seen too much go wrong. In our homes, in our schools, in our churches, in our nation, we have witnessed and sometimes experienced the cost not only of love’s absence but of love run amok — so many of us have opted out altogether.


But it’s worth saying that the besetting sin of one generation is indicative of the sins of all the rest. What we see in full-color and high-definition in today’s young people is there in each one of us, hidden, perhaps, but present every time we allow the softness of our hearts to harden into cynicism. 


We all do it. The casual dismissal of a person because of their political views; the justification of anger or violence when it serves our purposes or protects our interests; the inability to maintain a conversation or even to listen to someone without glancing at our phone. These behaviors all come from the same place: a response to pain or to a perceived threat where we choose to preserve our own ego rather than risk the self-diminishment we fear will come when we open ourselves to someone or something else. The logic is easy to follow. Totally understandable. But you don’t need to be a priest or a prophet to notice the consequences of such an attitude.


The next few years, maybe even the next few months, will be pivotal, both for us collectively and individually. We will all be challenged to ask and answer whether or not we will we succumb to the spirit of the age. Will we fall back on our own defenses? Will we let our hearts be hardened by cynicism or disgust? Or will we follow a different path entirely? Will we dare to keep moving forward, open and honest and maybe sometimes afraid — but still filled with faith? 


The way is there, stretching out before us. Although it’s narrow, the road is crowded. Angels and archangels, apostles, martyrs, saints living and dead are all walking toward, all looking for the One who promised to be with us always. He is with us; and so is someone else. 


Like mother, like child. Like child, like mother. The Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary stands at the head of us all. Greater than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, chief of the saints, Mary is honored not simply because of her role in the story of salvation but also because of her unassailable faithfulness and her unquestioning love for the God she bore as Son. 


Mary, more than anyone else in the world, knows that deep love can cause deep grief; and yet she always said “yes.” She always loved more. She always believed that God will make good of every evil in the end. 


Mary believed that with her whole heart, mind, soul, and strength not because she is different than us; but because she allowed the love of God to fill her so completely that it was heaven simply to be with him in everything — which did come with pain. The words of the Prophet Simeon were never far from her mind: “A sword will pierce your own heart, also.”  


Tradition tells us that Mary lived for a time as a child in the Temple; she would have heard just what was foretold of God’s Messiah, the Christ: He would suffer. He would die. He would be rejected by all those who once had welcomed him as king. Mary knew what was coming; and she soon experienced it. King Herod and his soldiers. Losing Jesus in Jerusalem. Losing Jesus to his ministry. Hearing her son speak before thousands of people. Sensing the plots of his enemies. 


Mary had no control over any of it. No choice in the matter. Her freely chosen act of love in bearing Jesus Christ came with much she did not choose, much she did not want. Still, she loved him. She loved her Son and her God with such compassion and tenderness that she kept saying, “let it be to me according to your will” even when that meant watching, helpless, as he was nailed to the cross. 


That was its own death for her. But she never ran away. She never looked away. Her resolve never failed. Mary would remain with Jesus in life and in death — which is why she and the other myrrh-bearing women went to the tomb on Easter morning, only to find that Jesus was not there. He had risen and was going on ahead of them to Galilee. Going on ahead of them to heaven, where Mary dwells with him now, never to be parted. 


That happy ending could not have happened if Mary hadn’t dared to risk the unknown of total surrender to God’s will. And that surrender could not have happened without the love that, burning in her heart, made her the vessel, the ark, the Mother of God Incarnate. 


And so it is that we look to her as our example and our hope. She knows what it means to suffer, to be sinned against in ways we could never anticipate and for which we could never fully prepare. Mary knows. She’s lived it; and she nevertheless remained holy, alight, illumined with love for God. She prays that we might be so filled with that love that we might say “yes” to God’s will and so find ourselves on the same journey that she has taken — which is the only way to find what we all really want.


Peace. Safety. Comfort and contentment. These things can never be secured out of a state of fear. We can never truly be happy, never truly flourish if we’re constantly retreating into the confines of our personal space. Love and life are found on the outside, in the open, on the road where we meet Christ in our friends and in our enemies and as we walk with our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers in the faith. That is where we become who we are. That is where we become who we are meant to be. 


Love hurts. It’s true. But perhaps that pain is simply the beginning of the Spirit’s labor in our lives, wherein we will all give birth to Christ. And if that is our life, if that is the Christian life, who better to teach us than God’s mother, who loved and lost and learned just as we all do and persevered regardless. She abides now in glory, beside her beloved Son; and she prays that we might make it there, too. AMEN.

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