Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 5:21-43

This is a weird gospel, right? Two stories, one within the other, seemingly unrelated.  Bible scholars call this “intercalation”, and you see it in the Old Testament in some stories.  But in the New Testament, we only see it in Mark’s gospel, and he does this six or seven times, depending on how you count.  But this is the most famous of the stories. It’s a very vivid story, and you can almost see what is going on from Mark’s description.  Jarius wants to get Jesus to his daughter as soon as possible, and he is pushing through the crowd.  But Jesus stops and says, “Who touched my cloak?”  And then there’s the whole interacting with the woman who has been cursed with twelve years of bleeding.  And this ends with people coming to tell Jarius that it’s too late, his daughter is dead.  

Mark clearly wants us to link these stories.  They are both about women who, notably,  are not named.  The woman with the bleeding problem would be excluded from marriage, would not be allowed in the synagogue, and would be almost like a leper.  To add to her misery she is out of money.  She is unclean, and forbidden to mingle among healthy people.  And yet, she pushes forward and does the unthinkable-- she touches Jesus’ garment.  The little girl is the opposite.  She’s got some kind of acute illness and is at the point of death.  Things are happening fast, which is why Jarius is so distraught.  And after she dies, Jesus, who has been touched by an unclean person, touches a dead body -- at least we think she’s dead.  They weren't stupid in those days and when the attendants come out to say she’s dead, they probably noticed that her breathing had stopped and that she had no pulse.  When Jesus says she’s only sleeping, I think he’s reassuring Jarius, not making a statement of fact.

Both women are united by the number twelve.  This is a special number for the Jewish people at that time.  There were twelve tribes, twelve patriarchs, and twelve regions in Israel.  There are twelve minor prophets in the bible. Elijah built his altar with twelve stones -- and I could go on.  The little girl is twelve years old, and the woman with the bleeding problem has had the condition for twelve years.  Twelve is a sign of completion.  The bleeding woman has completed her sentence, in a way.  The little girl ends her old life and starts on a new one. I think Mark wants us to recognize symbolically that the old order is out, the new one in.  Jesus cannot be made unclean by being touched by a ritually unclean person, nor does he become unclean by touching a dead body.  When God breaks into the human condition, all bets are off, you don’t know what he will do next, and your rules don’t count.

I think Mark has an important lesson for us in these two stories.  It has to do with faith.  The older woman had faith that if she touched Jesus’ garment she would be healed -- so she does.  She receives the healing she desired, and was about to slink away, when Jesus calls out “who has touched my clothes?”  Now if you were slinking away, you would probably continue to slink, right?  After all, you got what you came for.  But our woman drops to the floor and tells Jesus that she’s the one and then waits -- what will Jesus do, take back his healing?  Reveal to the crowd that she is an unclean person?  She is at his mercy.  But despite fear and trembling she did come forward to answer his question.  And that is Mark’s idea of faith.  Faith is not simply believing something, it’s acting on that belief, even when you don’t know what will happen--or perhaps you do know, and it won’t be good, but you act anyway because it’s the right thing to do.  In this case, the woman is rewarded.  Jesus tells her that her faith has saved her.  Before this of course she had felt herself to be cured when she touched his garment; but now Jesus confirms that she is cured.  

The faith lesson continues.  When the attendants tell Jesus and Jarius that the little girl is dead, Jesus  said, “Do not be afraid, just have faith”.  Faith in some sense is the opposite of fear.  But in a sense it accompanies fear.  Because to act on faith, which is real faith, remember, always involves taking a leap into the unknown.  We don’t know what our action will accomplish -- maybe nothing at all, maybe we’ll be laughed at, which is what’s going on in this story.  Jarius wouldn’t be wrong by saying, “Thanks for nothing, Jesus.  Now leave me to my grief”.  Because who can raise a dead person?  But despite the ridicule, Jarius and his wife continue to act on faith, and the reward is that their daughter is restored to them.  

Faith is acting despite not knowing the consequences of our actions.  Faith is acting even when there is fear.  

And of course we love that human touch of Jesus.  They are all marveling at the miracle 00 the bedridden, indeed dead little girl is not just alive, she is up walking around.  The sickness that had felled her is gone.  She probably hasAn’t taken any food or drink since her illness started.  And Jesus recognizes this and tells the parents, “Give her something to eat!”  

In these two interwoven stories Mark teaches us about faith.  During this coming week let us act on our faith -- we’ll have the opportunity.  It will feel like fear.  

  

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 4:35 - 41

When I was about four, my parents took my little sister and I on a vacation in the mountains.  We rented a cabin on the shore of a mountain lake.  In the Rocky Mountains there are lakes which fill the valleys, and Swan Lake was long, deep, narrow.  So one day my dad got us all into a rowboat and we went out on the water.  He had planned to do some fishing and I guess the rest of us were just supposed to relax.  All of a sudden a mild breeze became a gust of wind and before long the surface of the lake was getting choppy.  My dad became very anxious and rowed us back to shore as quickly as he could.  As we got out of the boat rain started to fall and the lake became very violent.  Whenever I read this gospel passage I think of those moments, some of the earliest I can remember in my life.  

With my dad’s hard rowing and my mother’s urging us back into the cabin, I felt, maybe for the first time, the idea that nature was not as friendly as you think. 

Many years ago I had a patient, a young woman who had a very unusual cancer involving her face.  She was deeply in love and planning to get married, and it looked as though the cancer might be curable with surgery, so an attempt was made.  Unfortunately it wasn’t successful, and several months later the tumor had returned.  She went to Mass General and Sloan Kettering to seek opinions, and ultimately chose to have a radical procedure that involved the removal of her eye and part of the skull.  Afterwards several plastic surgery procedures were carried out.  Somewhere during this time her boyfriend decided to break off the engagement.  And the tumor came back.  When I met her, the goal became making her last few weeks with as little pain as possible.

But you can imagine that her pain was not just in her mangled face.  She had that kind of pain that’s deep in the soul, the kind that asks, “why me?”  She had been religious once, but felt abandoned.  She wanted nothing to do with her former church, and several times expressed the idea that if there was a God at all, he was certainly a cruel God.  And I wish I could tell you that before she died she made her peace with God, but that wasn’t the case.  I was notified by the police one afternoon that they had found her unresponsive and it appeared to be suicide.  

Today we hear the apostles cry out, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”  And sooner or later we will all be tempted to ask that question.  And great faith will be demanded of us.  Because as Jesus tells his disciples, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”  The disciples had just seen Jesus do something only God could do -- control the wind and the sea.  But according to Mark they had already witnessed many miracles, including the cure of a man possessed by a demon and the healing of a paralytic.  And they had been listening to his teachings on the kingdom of heaven -- the idea expressed in many different parables, that God is the one who is in charge.  When someone sews seeds, God gives them life;  When a mustard seed is planted, God sees to it that it grows into the largest of shrubs.  

Our Catholic religion has as its primary purpose the uniting of ourselves to God in a bond of love.  Love cannot exist unless the ones doing the loving are free, free to say yes or no to the love offered.  But if we are to accept God’s love, we need faith, we need to see that the storms in our lives are no match for God’s power.  And that’s something that needs reinforcement, especially when it seems God is not listening.

God is always communicating with us.  Sometimes he uses words, but most of the time, I think, he uses the events that shape our lives.  But if we are to pick up on his message, we need to meet him half-way.  And that’s very hard in our society, when there is so much noise, so much to distract us.  You remember the story of Elijah, who went into a mountain cave, and experienced an earthquake, but God’s voice was not in the earthquake.  Then there came a strong wind, then fire, and neither carried God’s voice.  Once everything had quieted down, Elijah recognized the voice of God in a gentle whisper, a still small voice.

If we want to progress in our love affair with God, we can’t be talking all the time; we have to listen.  That means sitting in silence, doing what the Blessed Mother did -- pondering things in our hearts.  We need to remember the times in our lives that do show the hand of God, often something we don’t realize until much later.  And then we can take comfort in knowing that God orders all things for good.

A long time ago, the writer of the 46th psalm put these words into God’s mouth:  “Be still and know that I am God.”  During this summer let us cultivate the stillness, let us remember that Jesus will quiet our storms in his good time.  Let us have faith.  

Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, cycle B

 Mark 3:20-35

Most scripture scholars believe that the Gospel of Mark was the first one written, and that Matthew and Luke both used the Gospel as a framework for their own.  In fact, about 90 percent of Mark is in Matthew’s gospel.  And that brings up a question.  If Mathhew and Luke were using Mark’s gospel, why did they leave out the party about Jesus' relatives coming to seize him because they thought he was out of his mind?  Both Matthew and Luke quote the Pharisees who attribute Jesus’ miracles to Beelzebul, and Jesus’ response to this accusation.  But they say nothing about the family of Jesus.

I think this tells us something.  By the time Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels, the church was pretty well established, and the consensus was that Jesus was driven, the Spon of God.  By the time John writes, even later, there is on question in his gospel.  But Mark was written at an earlier time, when the human-ness of Jesus had not been swallowed up into the divine.  So maybe it’s a more accurate portrayal.

In any event, it’s clear that two opinions are being expressed here about Jesus’ ministry.  One is that of the Pharisees, who attribute his miracles to the devil.  The other is about his relatives, who attribute his behavior to madness.  And what was the behavior?  First, his relatives probably had watched him grow up.  There wasn’t much to see -- he was a nice normal Jewish carpenter who looked after his mother and did good work.  And then, suddenly, and it was sudden if you read any of the gospels, he made an abrupt break with his normal life and began wandering around preaching, depending on the charity of others for his food and drink.  He associated with tax collectors and even had one follower who was one.  He had another follower who was a member of a radical political party - Simon the Zealot.  The rest of his followers were not much to look at - fishermen, another carpenter named Thomas -- there wasn’t a Pharisee in the lot.  And yet he was telling people what God thought, or at least what he thought God thought.  It’s not surprising that his relatives, those who knew him best, thought he was insane, and were committed to bring him home and lock him in the basement until he came to his senses.  He wouldn’t be the first or the last.

I elaborate on this point because when Jesus talks about the unforgivable sin, I think Mark wants us to notice not only the Pharisees, who attribute his miracles to the devil, but also Jesus’ own relatives, who in a sense are disowning him.  Both groups are missing the point.  Because Jesus is clearly working out the prophecies.  IT was only a little while ago when Jesus stood in the synagogue and said, “today this prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing”.  The blind were seeing, the deaf were hearing, the lame were walking and the gospel was being preached to the poor.  What more could Jesus do?  But there were those and will always be those who refuse to see what’s right in front of their noses.  

Jesus’ message then and now is radical.  Not everyone is willing to accept it or even believe there is a message.  And the reasons for not accepting the message boil down to two, for Mark. One is what his relatives give -- look at the one giving the massage -- we know all about him.  He’s gone crazy so don’t listen to him.  The other is given by the Pharisees -- he can’t be trusted because he is not one of the in crowd who study the scriptures and know how to be religious.  And since he works miracles, it’s got to be due to demons.  

Human beings haven’t changed much,.  We still have a hard time accepting and following Jesus.  Sometimes it’s because we think we know the messenger, like Jesus’ family, and don’t really accept him or her as a bearer of the message.  You see that today among some conservative Catholic circles, who have decided Pope Francis is not to be trusted, because he’s made some off the cuff comments that are ambiguous. How many of us have actually read his writings, which are the product of his serious thinking?  

And we are like the Pharisees as well.  There are some people who are unwilling to listen to anyone who doesn’t have what they consider credentials.  I like to listen to WJMJ when I’m driving. That’’s the official radio station of the Hartford Archdiocese.  It’s run by a priest and staffed by Catholic radio personalities, as they call themselves.  I asked a friend of mine if he ever listened to it.  He had and stopped, because every now and then there is a short reflection given by a minister of a protestant denomination.  

The Lord has not stopped preaching and working miracles.  Let us pray today that we will hear his authentic voice and recognize the miracles in our own lives, especially the miracle of being a member of his family. 

Corpus Christi, 2024

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

Last Sunday we attended the baptism of our twentieth grandchild, now almost two- and one-half months old.  JJ was adopted.  His mother had a narcotic habit, and JJ needed to begin life by being weaned off of his own addiction acquired in the womb.  This meant extended hospital time, and my daughter in law had to spend seven weeks living in a different state, fending for herself, four hundred miles from my son.  Needless to say, she and baby JJ bonded.

Most of her relatives and many of ours were present for the pre-baptism dinner, the baptism, and the post baptism party.  There were many ladies and a couple of men who wanted to hold the baby.  He seems to have a pretty even temper, and in general put up with all this holding for a  bit, but sooner or later, he needed to be given back to his mother, who would put him on her shoulder and walk around making soothing noises, until JJ was comfortable and often asleep.  

Today we celebrate the fact that Jesus left us himself, to be consumed, to be worshiped, to be confided in, and to be comforted by.  There has been a lot of theology written about the Eucharist.  Surveys show that when you ask Catholics if the Eucharist is really the body and blood of Jesus, a sizable percentage will say no, they don’t believe that.  And in a way, you can’t blame them.  Because when we put this mystery into words, words are never enough, they don’t do justice to the miracle.  I suspect there are Catholics who couldn’t live without the Eucharist, but when you ask them to explain transubstantiation, they can’t do that.  If you ask them if eating the bread and drinking the wine is the exact same thing as biting Jesus on the arm and sucking his blood, they might very well say, “no, that’s disgusting”.  And they’d be right.  Oddly enough this was a big controversy in the Middle Ages.  What do we mean by the real presence?  What happens when we eat the bread which we claim is Christ's body, and drink the wine which we claim is Christ’s blood?  And then we say that if you eat the body or drink the blood, it’s all the same, because since the resurrection his body and blood can’t really be separated.

There was a school of theology in the Middle Ages which insisted that taking the Eucharist was exactly the same as if you ate his body and drank his blood when he was walking around on the earth.  That position was condemned, and I think that’s what gets people about the real presence -- it’s so obviously not that.  But as the author Flannery O'Connor was to say about the Eucharist, “If it’s only a symbol, then to hell with it.”  

Thomas Aquinas as usual had something to say about the Eucharist, as about most things.  He starts with a definition of a sacrament - it’s a sign that causes what it signifies.  When water is poured over a child and the words ``I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” are said by the minister of baptism, the child enters into a new and permanent relationship with God.  And when Father says the words of consecration over the bread and wine, what is there is no longer bread and wine, but the body and blood of Christ.  Thomas distinguishes between the Jesus who walked around on the earth and was crucified and died -- that’s the proper presence.  The presence in the Eucharist Thomas called “sacramental presence”, meaning that through the power of God everything Jesus intended to achieve in the sacrament happens, and we witness his presence through faith, not through our senses.  I should point out that Thomas himself, after offering this explanation, wasn’t happy with it.  The story goes that he set down his writings before a crucifix and asked Jesus what he thought.   Jesus replied, “You have written well of me, Thomas.  What do you want me to give you?”  And Thomas replied, “Only you, Lord.”

And that’s the mystery of the Eucharist.  Jesus, through Godly power, made it possible for us to truly enter into an intimate relationship with him, a relationship we cannot have with any other person.  It’s a little bit like JJ and his new mother.  You can be handled by many different people but sooner or later, you just need to be with your mother.  When we receive Jesus in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, he picks us up and comforts us; he fills up the god-shaped hole that is in our being; for a moment, we touch heaven.  No explanation can make this happen, only faith.  That’s why some people come to adoration.  That’s why some people come early to Mass or leave late; that’s why some people bow to the tabernacle and come to church in their Sunday best.  If we act on what we know -  that Jesus is truly present, it will become more so for us and someday like Thomas we will realize that we only want one thing -- only you, Lord.  

Pentecost Sunday 2024

John 7:37-39

What feast are we talking about in this gospel?  Well, if you go back a bit you will see that this is the feast of Tabernacles, or the feast of Booths, or as it is named in Hebrew, Sukkot.  It’s one of seven feasts of the Jewish religion.  It goes back to the book of Numbers.  It’s a seven day long celebration, commemorating the time the Israelites wandered in the dessert and finally entered the promised land where the story has it that it was then God stopped providing Manna and water from a rock because they now had their own land and abundant crops left over from the previous inhabitants that had been driven out.

The feast started with the building of symbolic dwellings.  In the cities sticks would be erected on flat roofs and the observant Jew would spend some time each day in the makeshift structure, remembering how there was a time when the people were homeless.  On the seventh day the priests in the temple would fill an ornate jug with water and march in procession into the temple and around the main altar upon which they would pour the water as a sacrifice to God.  Then the men in the crowd would raise a piece of fruit or a sheaf of grain in the air and call out “Praise God” three times.  So the seventh day, the last day of the celebration, was a day when water itself was honored.

We don’t have much of a water problem in our part of the country.  In fact there are times when it seems we have too much.  A few years ago a cousin of mine who farmed in Montana had to make a daily round trip of about sixty miles to obtain enough water to keep his livestock alive; Montana was having one of the worst droughts it had ever experienced.  Anybody who has anything to do with plants understands the relationship between water and life.  And Jesus’ audience were even more sensitive, because Israel is semi-arid in its climate and famine from crop failure was always a possibility.  

Now let’s examine the statement that  Jesus makes:  “ Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink..  As scripture says, “Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me.”  Jesus is quoting Isaiah in that last part, but there are many allusions in the prophetic writings to the life-giving force of water, and to the comparison of what God will do to what water does, which is to bring life.  Isn’t it interesting that belief in Jesus does something to us that allows us not only to have a new life, but to communicate that life; we become the source of that living water, which is the Spirit.

John the gospel writer makes the point that there was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.  But there are many references to the Spirit of God in the Old testament.  In the beginning of Genesis we read: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and barren, and darkness covered the abyss while the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” And Jesus quotes Isaiah himself at the beginning of his public ministry, when he reads “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…”  Obviously John is not saying that the Spirit didn’t exist until Jesus had gone through his passion, death and resurrection.  He does say that something new has happened because of Jesus’ glorification. 

The Jews of Jesus' time considered their temple as the place where they met God in a special way.  That’s why they only had one temple.   That's why they had pilgrimages.  That’s why the only place you could have your sins forgiven was to sacrifice something in the temple.  The temple was the source of living water -- Ezekiel had that vision in which he saw water flowing from the temple giving life to trees that provided food and medicine.  Jesus is now the source of the living water, and it is within the believer that the encounter between God and Man is to take place.  The Spirit makes us a new creation -- individually and as part of the Body of Christ, the Church.  This transformation, possible because of the sacrifice of Jesus, began on that first Pentecost, continuing in the world and in we believers even today.

The Spirit within us is a down payment on the glory that Saint Paul promises is to come, the glory of transformed existence when there will no longer be any opposition to Christ’s reign, when our lives will no longer be disrupted because our old nature wants to hang on to sin and the gloriously transformed new nature hungers after holiness and godliness.  Deep inside everyone is an empty space wanting to be filled up with God; and the waters that wells up within us makes that possible.  

Seventh Sunday in Easter, cycle B

The Gospel we read today is part of Jesus’ high priestly prayer, in which he prays for his disciples -- that’s you and I.  Today I was struck by two statements:  “I gave them your word, and the world hates them, because they do not belong in the world anymore than I  belong in the world”.  Then Jesus says, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.’

Those two statements almost contradict each other, don’t they?  That’s one of the fun things about reading the bible -- you encounter speed bumps that make you stop and think, and the more you read the bible, the more speed bumps you meet.

So as I held those statements in my head, I went over to the Jewish nursing home for my weekly visit. As I met new residents, I was reminded of someone I encountered several weeks ago.  She was an elderly woman who had had knee replacement surgery a few years back.  The joint became swollen and started to be mildly uncomfortable, so she saw her doctor, who aspirated fluid and found it to be infected.  She was admitted to the hospital for intensive antibiotic treatment and drainage of the abscess.  While in the hospital some abnormalities in her blood test lead to further studies, and to make a long story short, she turned out to have cancer involving the liver.  The next day they transferred her to the rehab hospital.  When I met her she was still in shock -- and there was no one in her life to be with her -- she hadn’t told her children yet.  

But her story isn’t that unusual.  We all will have a moment when something will come along that will remind us that we are mortal, that we are really helpless to change what is happening to us.  And we will be in shock.  And we will have to make a decision -- do I move closer to God or further away?  And unfortunately many people move further away, because they can't believe that God would treat them that way.  But you meet other people whose faith is strengthened, and they grow closer to God because in a way, everything else they thought was important becomes much less important.  Somehow in this moment they see more clearly, and conclude that the God they believe in does everything for the good of those he loves -- you and I included.

You and I practice our faith and we go along day to day.  We have ups and downs and always look forward to getting back to normal.  And we know by our faith that God loves us -- the gospel we are reading is an example:  Jesus himself prays for us.  And that’s why he does not pray that the Father take us out of this world in which we don’t belong.  

We can’t earn our salvation by doing good things or praying a lot.  The Old Testament tells us that.  God gave the Israelites many rules, and the implication was that if they followed those rules, they could achieve salvation.  And they never did follow the rules, and the prophets came and reminded them, and it didn’t work.  Jesus is the only one who finally kept the commandments perfectly,  And he invites us to share in his triumph by believing in him, by forming a relationship with him.  And if we believe that God loves us so much that everything that happens to us is meant for our good, then somehow the worst moments in our lives are really meant to draw us more deeply into that relationship -- at the risk of destroying it, because we are free.  As Jesus told his disciples, “I no longer call you slaves, I  call you my friends”.  And a true friend will do everything possible for the good of his friend, short of taking away his freedom.

And as I thought about these things I was reminded of that dreadful moment when Jesus was hanging on the cross and people were mocking him.  And the thief on one side joined in the mockery.  And the thief on the other side said “we are here because we deserve to be, we did the crime.(I’m paraphrasing again) but this man is innocent!Then turning to Jesus he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And he heard those words we all long to hear, “Today you will be with me in paradise”.  In the moment of greatest helplessness, in the moment when the entire future disappears in a wink, the good thief shows you and I that those moments are when Jesus opens himself up to us completely, and waits for us to freely choose to deepen our relationship to the point of becoming one with him.  

This of course is Mother’s Day weekend.  My very best friend in the world is a mother and a grandmother.  She’s given birth six times, none of which was easy.  She’s been disappointed by me and by her children more than once, and forgives easily.  She’s worried for her kids and grandchildren, and that leads her to praying for them.  And everything just seems to bring her closer to Jesus.  A good mother, maybe more so than a good priest, reminds me of Jesus, because she stands ready to give up everything for her family.  So happy Mother’s day to all you Mothers -- I hope you realize what a beautiful vocation you have.  

The Sixth Sunday of Easter, cycle B

John 15:9 - 17

Are you a joyful person?  Jesus makes that statement today that always bothers me a little because I’m not sure my joy is complete.  The older I get, though, the more I see a relationship between joy and holiness.  Nine months after I became a deacon I was about to serve in that role on Holy Saturday, which as you know is a complicated liturgy.  I told Monsignor Devine that I was afraid I’d make a fool of myself by forgetting something important and he told me what I’ve told many altar servers since then.  If you don’t know what to do, move slowly and look holy.  There are probably several kinds of joy.  Jesus refers to his joy.  In the Gospel of John I think it’s clear that Jesus finds his joy in being perfectly aligned with God’s will, and apparently expects that to be the case for us as well.  As Saint Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.” 

This is the month of Mary.  Some of you may have heard of the Franciscan Crown Rosary.  It’s like a regular rosary but has seven decades with two extra Hail Mary’s, making 72.  It was believed that Mary lived seventy two years before her earthly life ended.  With each decade you meditate on one of the seven joys of  Mary.  These are the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth of Our Lord, the visit from the Magi, the Finding of Our Lord in the temple, the Resurrection and the Assumption of Mary into heaven, body and soul.  

Now I am not going to say the Crown Rosary right now.  But I think we can meditate on these joys of Mary and see parallels in our own lives, because after all who doesn't want to be assumed into heaven some day?

Saint Bernard envisioned all of heaven holding its breath while waiting for Mary’s answer to the question the Angel asked.  But the angel Gabriel never asked a question. He simply said “Hello, you lucky girl! You are going to be the mother of the Savior!”  Mary knew enough biology to question just how that would happen, and when the angel elaborated, Mary responded “Do it to me like you said.” I’m giving you a different translation of the Greek words.  So we recognize that joy exists in accepting God’s will for us, even when it doesn’t fit our plans.

In the Visitation, Luke tells us that Mary heard that Elizabeth was with child, and immediately traveled to help her out.  It was when she met Elizabeth that she knew the Angel’s promise had  been fulfilled -- Elizabeth said, “How is it that the mother of my Lord has come to me?”  We all find joy when something confirms that we are on the right path.  That’s how you know your charism -- your gift from the Holy Spirit meant to build up the Church.  You feel a certain satisfaction when you are using it.  

In the Birth of Our Lord, Luke tells us that the shepherds came to worship her child, and were then joined by angels.  There is a great joy in the assurance of others that you are doing what God desires of you.  We are social animals of course, and the path of life we walk is easier when we feel the support of others.

In the Adoration by the  Magi, was Mary joyful because she realized that her son would be offering salvation to the whole world, not just the Jews?  We get a little taste of this, I think when we read about good things happening because of the actions of fellow members of our Church, even when we have nothing to do with it. That recent movie, Cabrini, meant more to us practicing Catholics than to other people. 

After  Jesus is found in the temple, Mary must have felt joy to have her twelve year old boy back, even as she scolds him a little.  But I think the real joy is in the sentence, he returned with them to Nazareth and was obedient to them, and grew in wisdom and grace and favor”  Most of us who have children have experienced the satisfaction of the family being together.  IT’s a common enough joy, but a joy nevertheless.

And of course the sixth joy, the Resurrection of Jesus, was proof that  death has been conquered.  As an aside, scripture is silent on whether or not Jesus appeared to Mary after his resurrection. I sometimes wonder if this was because Mary was the only human being who didn’t need that to happen to believe it. After all he had predicted it, and that might have been enough for her, if not for the apostles.    

And the seventh joy, of course, was Mary’s assumption into heaven.  That moment of course will be the greatest joy for you and I as well.

So think about the joys of Mary this month.  Measure your own joy against hers and learn from her how to find Christ’s joy in you and have it become complete.