Last night at Edge, we were blessed to have Jedd from our Core Team lead us in our session. He tackled some big challenges last night, answered some hard (but beautiful) questions from your children, and helped them to look more deeply into the mysteries of our faith. We talked a lot last night about obedience, and about the people who have said yes to God; like Mary and like Jesus. In small groups, we reflected on where God was calling us to say "yes" to Him in our lives. Now, as Catholic adults, I'm sure you've also spent time thinking about and praying about where God wants you to say yes to Him, so I want to offer an extension of this line of reflection. I invite you to go read the Magnificat found in Luke 1:46-55 when you start reflecting. After reading the Magnificat, I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like if an angel came to me and told me I was pregnant, and honestly, my response would probably be nothing like her's. My inclination is to believe that my initial response would be anxiety (probably bordering on panic). But that's not the case for Mary, the angel tells her this and she says the modern day equivalent of, "Cool, bro. Let's do it." and then goes to her cousin's house. Once she gets to her cousin's house she is so happy about what God is doing that she sings a song (seriously. The Bible says she literally sings a song, like this is a Disney movie). Now I, by nature and by training, am a singer- I sing all of the time, I have two degrees in music- but I am going to go ahead and guess that in this situation, my first instinct would not be to sing a song. But not only does Mary sing a song, in this song she calls herself blessed. And I can see why she would feel that way, but my honest thought is that I would be so worried about what was going to happen to me and how the challenges I was about to face would affect my life that I sincerely doubt I would call myself blessed. So, this week in preparing for and talking about Mary's fiat, I was challenged to look at the attitude with which I say yes to God. Jesus tells a parable in Matthew (21:28-31) where a son is asked to do something by his father and he tells him that he won't do it. In the end, though, he has a change of heart and he does it anyway. Perhaps it is me projecting my own experience with my parents on this story, but it calls to mind times when my parents would ask me to do something I had no interest in doing. At first, I would refuse but eventually, I too would have a change of heart and I'd come around (most of the time at least). I've taken great comfort in that parable, because I imagine that the brother who does what he is asked is still probably not thrilled about it, but he does it anyway and Jesus says he's the one who will enter the kingdom of God. Mary's response to God challenges that view for me. It is not enough to simply say 'yes' to God and go about doing His will as though it is some favor to Him. Rather, from Mary's response, I feel we are called to find joy in the fact that we have been called to something hard. We are called to find delight in what the Lord is doing to and through us. We are challenged to remember that in our initiation into the Church, we are called to do Christ's saving work and in that we are all blessed. We are blessed to be part of this Holy family, blessed to be called children of God, and blessed to be sent forth to do His work. May we, following the example of Mary, our patroness, always be cheerful in our giving and our doing. I pray the Lord will bless you with abundant peace and joy this week.
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