Follow me with Mary

Follow Me with Mary

“Follow me with Mary”

http://www.ayletmarcharbel.org/content/Follow-me-with-Mary

The topic of “followship” has been exclusively linked to religious and consecrated life, even though it regards Christian life as a whole. We will meditate together on all meanings of followship, after having spent a long time meditating on our Christian vocation as monks in the heart of the world. We will focus on the rich and vast dimensions of followship, then turn our gaze to Mary whose example teaches us the practical ways of followship.

Followship:

Following Christ is an expression of the “continual return to Jesus” whereby the disciple’s life is characterized by a return to Jesus in her way of life, making Jesus the primary reference for her life.
Following Christ means “responding to God’s faithfulness in Jesus Christ.” God is faithful and true, and he translated his true faithfulness in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, who, in turn, answered with his person, teaching, and deeds all human needs in order to save us. Followship comes as a human response to this Divine faithfulness. To respond is to interact positively with this faithfulness and to accept it and its requirements responsively.
Following Christ means “being invited to continue, in a unity of faith and love, the work that Jesus accomplished–the work which Jesus reveals to us in the Holy Spirit and which he accomplishes and completes in his people’s hearts.” In other words, it means to do what Jesus did under the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the salvation of humanity.
Following Christ means “to communicate and unite with him, meaning, to walk with him, in him, and through him the path he walked in obedience to the Father.” This leads us always to listen to, and be prepared for, God’s will in order to accomplish it in our lives. To follow Jesus means to obey the Father.
Following Christ means “imitating him.” Imitating is more than just admiring. It is “to follow in the footsteps or the path of someone who inspires us.” It means to access the life of Jesus and his mission in order to get to know the One who leads us to the Father.
Following Christ means “discovering that we have been transformed by love.” Often, when we talk about followship, we analyze its conditions and fruits and neglect the source from which these fruits flow and draw vitality. Therefore, when we examine followship from the viewpoint of awareness, we understand better the commitment that walking with Jesus entails–the commitment “to know ourselves and understand ourselves in our relationship with God.” Whoever follows Jesus in full awareness discovers, then, that Jesus loves her and that this love changes, reforms, and transforms her; that she is led freely to Jesus by a strong appeal. This appeal deepens her freedom, guides her choices, supports her accomplishments and the realization of her vocation, keeps her away from compromise, frees her faithfulness and creative power, and grounds the collective “we” of intracommunal relations. This is how we understand the value of followship wherein “the new love” lies.
Following Christ means “the road on which Jesus sets us,” which is “to love until the end” just as Jesus loved his disciples at the Last Supper when he got up to serve them and to sacrifice himself in order to give them life. This is Agapè, the most sublime love, the gift of self to those we love and for their sake.
Following Christ is not stillness, routine, immobility, but creative dynamism. It is an awareness and an enhancement of our responsibility. When we follow Jesus, we are not motionless like people who are entranced or who have a rigid mentality. Rather, the person becomes active, dynamic, and responsible in accomplishing creative, dynamic things. Followship springs from deep, fundamental roots and flows into a life of vitality.
Following Christ means “a growing, developing life in the heart of a community animated by the Holy Spirit.” That was the experience of the first Christian community described in the Acts of the Apostles. It is the living example for every Christian community who longs to follow Jesus sincerely, to witness to him, and to continue his salvific work.
Following Christ means “to be reconciled with creation and history, and to commit to promoting justice in our world.” This is what supports us in our fundamental, radical renunciation essential to our growth. Essential here is the role of our moral choices through which we build a more humane world and change the face of the world. Our world is in becoming, which means that it is being continually created. Our Christian choices help it complete its creation. We are working to bring about more justice, humaneness, and development. Thus, we become sharers in a global project that benefits all.

With Mary:

We are now entering the month of May honoring Mary from whom we learn to follow Jesus by being close to him. Mary followed Jesus in a special way by the fact that she lived with him and that he was the center of her life. We learn from her how to follow Jesus.

Faith is a journey of growth:

When Mary was astonished by what Simeon the Elder told her in the Temple (Luke 2) and by Jesus’ answer to her when he in the Temple was among scholars, she meditated in her heart on all these things centered around Jesus himself (Like 2:51). Her goal was to understand and to deepen her faith in Jesus. The Word of God guided her choices as it did those of Joseph, who consented to change unexpectedly the direction of his journey. The Word of God, then, was in her heart, deeply interiorized, rooted in her as it takes root in us. This is what Simeon confirmed when he compared the Word to a sword that will pierce Mary’s heart. This is also what the Letter to the Hebrews states: “Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart” (4:12). This is what Jesus referred to when he said that the good and sincere disciple who follows Mary’s example deserves blessedness because he or she “hears the words of God and obeys it.” As Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium 58 says, Mary went on a “pilgrimage of faith,” meaning that she advanced in her faith to uncover the richness of the Word which traced her life path.

Clearly, we are called to “delve deeper into the Word of God,” which means to embed it deeply in our souls and hearts, so we may grow from it in our faith journey. The Word nourishes our faith and becomes “light to our path, a lamp to our feet.” This makes us look within us and ask to what degree our relationship with Jesus is progressing and how much our life is deepening in his presence through the Word we hear and whom we serve. To what degree does the Word occupy a place in our deepest core and our everyday life.
Mary, the poor one:

Mary is a living example of evangelical poverty. She is poor in the sense that she, the handmaiden of the Lord, consented to entering into the Lord’s plan and to allowing this plan to interfere with her life. She felt that “the Mighty One has done great things for me” (Luke 1:49). The key to Mary’s personal history was her humility, that is, being peacefully led and confidently accepting to come last, without control or authoritarianism. In short, her poverty is “a theological poverty she bore and deepened in her heart.”

Mary calls us to be “with her” so that we may understand that our followship is “peaceful and uncalculated abandonment to God’s will, because we are weak, and we accept our small stature as is.” Mary teaches us poverty by being humble like the person with a bent back who puts her life in the hands of the One risen from the dead and who strengthens and raises her.
Mary, the Mirror who reflects our aspirations

We are asking ourselves big questions here, but Mary is the Mirror who, in her person, faith and conduct, reflects the answers for us.

The person, a freedom project

In a predominantly individualistic and secularized world, people today view the question of their freedom as “responsible and autonomous people.” The person is her own project; she will “become what she makes of herself” (Sartre). People today are supposedly mature, free decision-makers who need no mandator. Therefore, all old expressions, such as “renunciation, emulation, belonging, and commitment” are now outdated and are given no currency in today’ society.

In this milieu, Mary is an “icon” suggesting to us an atmosphere of “unity and union.” St Ambrose says: “We honor saints with love and fraternal unity.” Hence, we do not today honor Mary only by imitating her, that is, “by copying what she did,” but by reflecting on the essence of her spirituality. We identify with her, which is different from mimicking her. Identification means to acquire, absorb, and contain all her inner, deep dispositions. According to the Gospel, the Lord interacted with Mary as a free woman. This freedom consists in responding to God’s commandments responsibly, with mature and grown reflection, and with a conduct of faith and self-giving. Mary walked the path of faith while facing difficulties and obstacles, but, living with Jesus under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, she reached the most mature stages of faith. Thus, the Gospel offers us Mary as an “icon” who compels us to live our faith as an essential, fundamental choice and to be faithful to it till the end in an effective, dynamic way.
Returning to history

Religion used to be considered “the opium of the people” and a shirking from personal responsibility for the world. It has become today an incarnation of faith in the heart of the world. Returning to history is not a return to the past in order to discover our Christian self and its salvific corollaries, but a temporal and actual commitment in the heart of our world. We translate our union with God into deeds for the sake of our world. Our Christianity means realizing the Kingdom in the course of our daily life by working for justice, peace, and an honorable, humane, and dignified life.

Mary remains the “living icon” who conveys to us a glowing love for the poor in her hymn which echoes her prayer: “God has chosen the poor and adopted their cause.” This is the echo of the hope that the face of the earth will be renewed because the lowly and the poor will be elevated and exalted in the New Covenant. Therefore, every believer who deeply meditates on “Mary, the living Icon” refuses to be complicit in committing injustice against the poor and the powerless, or simply to honor Mary without being active and taking initiative to help the downtrodden; to work lovingly to lift up their lives and to take on their burdens and to strive to lighten them. This is what it truly means when we say that Mary is a “New Creation with a new heart” who makes room in her life for the Holy Spirit to create a New World in preparation for the Kingdom. She is the woman accompanying the Apostles in the Upper Room where the Holy Spirit dwelled on them like tongues of fire; she accompanied the early Christian community (Acts 1:14). This is when the Holy Spirit inaugurated a life of “one heart, one mind, and a communal sharing of goods.” In the example of Mary, the “living Icon,” we are called to renew our “readiness for the Spirit” in order to work creatively to breathe a Christian spirit into our society.

The road to maturity:

We often worry, based on an extreme anthropological perspective, that our honoring Mary is an “infantile attachment to the maternal figure,” as psychology shows. As the child’s personality develops, it is very much influenced by the presence of the mother and her predominant role in satisfying the child’s essential needs. This psychological perspective often projects an image of infantilism on the spiritual relationship between believers and Mary. It sees in their seeking her intercession a return to the primordial maternal figure whose protection and care they miss and under whose wings they wish to remain. Another anthropological perspective professes a “collective subconscious” through which people are influenced by “myths” and “social structures.” In this framework, Mary takes the role of the feminine archetype depicted by ancient myths as the universal mother embracing and containing all.

Nevertheless, the correct “Living Icon of the Virgin” can be found through an informed reading of the Gospel. Mary is the mother who believes in life and its mystery–a life which is a “journey of growth.” Mary consented to walking through life in unexpected directions. She let go of her only son so he can fulfill his ministry. She experienced a detachment from him on the Cross and his renouncing her when he gave her to his brethren in the person of the apostle John. She consented to accompanying the Apostles to the Upper Room. She was not a possessive or smothering mother, overprotective of her son, suffocating and absorbing him. She was the woman who strove to animate the faith in Christ in the heart of the community of Apostles (at the wedding at Cana). Her motherhood took on a universal dimension at the foot of the Cross on Golgotha.

We adopt a mature attitude and overcome infantilism, not only when we conduct ourselves maturely and with discernment, but also when we discover and experience Mary as a connective person who is oriented in her conduct and spirit towards God and his Church.

This is because Mary does not imprison the souls of those honoring her, but she sends them out towards Christ so they may live with, connect, and cooperate with him. She also sends them out towards the source of her vocation and mission, towards the “Mighty one” whose name is Holy (Luke 1:49).

Conclusion:

Mary calls us to “followship with her” so we can work on achieving three things:

To liberate ourselves from sin. She, the immaculate conception, calls us to overcome all “insular selfishness” which is at the source of original sin.
To grow our “friendship with God” by acquiring the evangelical virtues such as hearing the word of God and abandoning ourselves to it through a prophetic reading of history and a practical commitment for the salvation of all our brothers and sisters in humanity.
To strengthen our “friendship with God” by appreciating the grace he bestows upon us, which means to be open to the power of the Holy Spirit who is active in us that we may become present and active in Christ, the New Person who is working for a new humanity.

Thus, Mary guides our way of life to a complete success in our historical commitment and in our covenant of love with God, that we may be “a message of optimism, a message of hope, and a message for life.”

Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Fr. Maroun Moubarak, m.l.m.