Mary, the poor one
(Fr. Dawood Kawkabany)
“Mary, the poor one”
Fr. Dawood Kawkabany - Church of St Sharbel, Adonis.
http://www.ayletmarcharbel.org/content/Mary-the-poor
(This is a transcription of an audio recording of the talk, hence its colloquial style).
“Christ is risen. He is truly risen”
I chose to start my talk on Mary with this greeting.
Virgin Mary’s concern is always to remind us of Jesus. Regrettably, many times we are so taken with her that we forget Jesus. This does not please her and should not please us either.
Mary is not an extraordinary person. She is very ordinary. It is we who are not “ordinary,” in the pejorative sense of the term. The less “ordinary” we are, in the pejorative sense, the more we see her as extraordinary.
This is because whatever Mary was is what each one of use is supposed to be.
This is our basic vocation.
First part. What was Mary?
Those of you who celebrated the Divine Liturgy today or read today’s gospel reading have read about the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves of bread. This is an extremely meaningful event. Jesus does not ask little of what we have. He asks for the little we have. There is a difference.
He does not ask for $10 out of the million dollars you have. No. You have $10 that can barely buy you lunch, and Jesus would ask you to give him the whole $10. He, then, does not ask little of what we have. He asks for the little we have. Jesus only deals with poor people, and not with wealthy people who deign to give him only some of what they have.
Mary was the first of those poor people. True, she did say: “From now on all generations will call me blessed,” but she is also the one who said: “I am the handmaid of the Lord.”
What does “handmaid of the Lord” mean? It means that I am not even master my own self. Handmaid is female for slave. Can’t I say no to God? No, simply because, if I am not master of my own self, then I am not master of my own will either. I give God all that he gave me. All I have is my being, that of a handmaid. He can have all of me!
This is a wonderful idea. Let us meditate on it.
We highly honor Mary with prayers and hymns and bless her abundantly, and this is not wrong because she is indeed full of grace. Why? Because she knows that she has very little, her being as a handmaid, and yet she still offered her whole being.
She did not say to God: “Make me extraordinary so I can offer you something better.” She said: “I offer you the handmaid that I am.”
1- Mary, the poor one. This is the first point in my talk tonight that will help us understand Mary’s mission and the depth of her journey toward holiness.
Mary lived in obedience to the Lord, the obedience of the poor who cannot afford to say “no.” Not that she was unwillingly saying “yes,” but she did not believe that she had the right to say no. “For I am not my own master, I am not for myself, I am just a handmaid.”
The only one poorer that Mary is Jesus himself, with the simple difference that Mary only confessed her poverty. Jesus, on the other hand, became poor for us when he emptied himself and took the form of a slave. Jesus willed to become poor, while Mary, a human, confessed her poverty, no more, no less.
2- Virginity: Mary’s virginity expresses her poverty.
I do not wish to debate whether or not Mary had already decided to remain a virgin, even before the annunciation, and I do not want to speculate on this topic. But the fact is that Mary did remain a virgin. Even more, she made this virginity her own.
What is virginity? At first glance, it may sound terrible, because of the lack of offspring. What good is virginity, then, if it is only a lack of offspring? It is as if, even here, Mary confesses and acknowledges that she cannot, of her own powers, give real life. She can give biological life, like all women can, but she still sees this as poverty. There is more, but she cannot do it. It is precisely in this poverty that will be planted the Wealth, who is Life; will be planted Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ has been given to poor humanity through the person of this woman who lived in poverty till the end.
What I mean is that Mary saw that whatever she may do, even if she became a mother and had children, these children will eventually die like everybody else, and this is not Life. This still is poverty and death.
In this woman who accepted poverty by living her virginity was planted True Life, who will be planted even in the depth of Hell to conquer death. This is what it means that Mary’s virginity is an expression of her poverty.
3- Mary’s prayer expresses her poverty:
We discussed once the wedding at Cana of Galilee, and talked about how Mary did not say to Jesus “they have no more wine,” but said; “they have no wine.” This means that the hosts were poor. The difference between them and Mary is that Mary accepts her poverty, while they do not want to admit their poverty. This could be gleamed from what the headwaiter said: “you have kept the good wine until now? Where did you get this good wine? Are you the One who has the good wine?”
This “beggar” - and I do not mean this in a pejorative sense - named Mary is the one who made the presence of the good wine possible.
This poor woman named Mary, who cannot do anything for you, was the reason you have good wine. That is because she stood in her poverty before the Lord, as well as at the foot of the Cross.
Even her son is not hers. I have drawn your attention to this before. Not once does Jesus call her his Mother in the Gospel. He does not call her his, or himself hers. Do you see now how poor she is?
4- Mary at Pentecost: If you read the Pentecost passage closely, you notice that Mary is mentioned before this event had occurred. They were gathered there, praying with some women and 120 people. Mary was one of these women.
She is the one who believed in the resurrection, and yet does not set herself apart from the disciples who were afraid and full of doubts. She prayed with them and for them. She was present, and did not care whether or not she would be mentioned on the day the Holy Spirit descended. Surely, the poor woman who prayed at Cana also prayed on the day of Pentecost. That is because there formed a community, called Church, who now births her Son to the world.
Mary no longer had monopoly on Jesus, and she never had monopoly on him in the first place. The Church now became the one who births Jesus everyday in the Eucharist and outside the Eucharist, and it now became a Church who gives children to the Father through baptism.
The Lord made this poor woman a mother to us, poor ones.
Even more, Mary is the one who, more than anyone, experienced the presence of the Lord in her womb for nine months, even though she was not given what is normally given to other women in terms of romantic and physical intimacy…she is the one who was given this miraculous birth. She listened to the shepherds’ announcement. She heard what Heaven told them. She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.
She is the one who carried Truth himself in her womb, yet she received the truth from the shepherds who are rarely found in the synagogue on the Sabbath, who have barely heard of Scripture, and who are not endowed with the knowledge of the Mystery of faith. She, the poor one, learned from them, discovered, and experienced the Truth whom she herself gave to the world and to the shepherds.
It is amazing how ecclesial Mary was, even before the church was known, even before Jesus announced the Church.
Mary was ecclesial. She listened in order to enrich herself. She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.
If I were to discuss Mary’s poverty in other aspects too, it would take a very long time.
5- Mary, the mother:
Imagine a mother hearing her son say to her about another man: “This is your son.” And imagine this other man taking her into his home. She is the mother who looked for Jesus everyday in Palestine, and then, when Jesus was told: your mother and brothers want to see you, he replied: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Mary is just like all those people who know how to accept faith in poverty.
Put yourself in Mary’s shoes, and reflect on the poverty that the Virgin Mary lived. But, keep in mind that she is the poor one who glorified the Lord.
The best testimony that can be given about God’s work in our lives is poor Mary’s testimony: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Why? Not because he rewarded me for my virtues, or because I obeyed him; but because he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. I, his handmaid, magnify him.
Learn from her. Only your poverty can assure you that God loves you unconditionally.
If you had many virtues, you might think that God loved you for your virtues.
Or you might think that it is because of your education: God loves you because you are intelligent and you help advance humanity.
Or you may think it is because of your beauty that God loves you, because he made you superb.
Only your poverty can reveal to you the depth of God’s love, that he loves you for no reason at all.
Second part: Mary and holiness, Mary and mission.
1- Mary and holiness:
Mary always attributed acts in her life to the Subject, who is God.
She never attributed acts to herself.
Never once in the Gospel does she say that she did or will do something, or that she wants to do something, or is planning on doing something.
Let us look at the Magnificat: the only thing she wants to do is to magnify the Lord. She thanks, praises, and exults in the Lord, and nothing else, because He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. God is the Subject, and she is simply the direct object of his action.
From now on all generations will call me blessed: again, generations is subject, and Mary, direct object.
The Mighty One has done great things for me… dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart…lifted up the lowly…
The more she realized her poverty, the better she understood what it meant to be a creature. All she could do was wait for her Creator to complete his work of Creation.
In her journey toward holiness, Mary professed that God is the Verb.
Hence, the Greek word Logos is sometimes translated as Word, and sometimes as Verb. It is an action-word.
Mary’s holiness is the result of God’s action in her.
Strangely, all she did was to proclaim that God exalted her, elevated her, sanctified her…just proclaim…
Even when the Angel announced to her the birth of Jesus, he said to her: “Rejoice, you are full of grace.” Why? “The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid: you will be given a pregnancy, and you will give birth to a son.” Here she is the subject, but only after she has received and accepted the pregnancy.
She will call him Jesus: notice that when some actions were attributed to her (giving birth, naming), she asked: “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” She means that she needs a man by her side, if she were to be act.
True, the angel says, you will act, but through the power of the Holy Spirit.
On one hand, this idea places a big responsibility on us regarding our journey to holiness, but, on the other hand, it gives us a lot of hope.
“Big responsibility” means that I cannot easily accept what Jesus said: “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” We have only done our duty. Sometimes, even at work, we humble ourselves too much so that people say good things about us. Sometimes we work hard to get praise from people. Other times, when someone congratulates me on my work, I deny having anything to do with it, and I claim that I didn’t do any work, even though I did. If you did the work, admit it and keep walking. Do not stick around waiting for praise. “God is the Subject, not you.”
Saint Paul, in all his greatness, says in the second letter to the Corinthians: I have suffered more than the other apostles, I was flogged, I was imprisoned,” etc. But he ends by saying: “yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” (for what it’s worth, this last verse is actually from Galatians 2:20 – Abouna Rodrigue)
“Big responsibility” means that I must renounce more and more, day after day. Here I would like to say something very important: renunciation and material poverty are good, but sometimes they can be problematic. My poverty and renunciation may make me believe that I have truly made a sacrifice. But if I never really cared for certain things, like a new car or expensive clothes, and I never really cared about material possessions, then I mistakenly believe that I have renounced these things. Renunciation is on the inside. Undoubtedly, outer simplicity accompanies it, but what’s important is inner renunciation.
Often times we achieve outer simplicity, but lose inner simplicity.
What I am trying to say here is, do not think for one moment that this poverty is enough. This poverty frees you to the extreme, to the degree that, whatever God gives you, you still feel in need. It is then that God accomplishes in you much more than what you yourself can accomplish. What can you accomplish on your own, with your human limitations? Relative to what God can accomplish, it is like a tiny letter compared to the infinite, or like a grain of sand compared to the size of the universe.
Thanks to your poverty, you are able to allow God to accomplish things in you.
In any case, this is an important lesson to take from Saint Sharbel’s spirituality, this man intoxicated with the love of God.
Saint Sharbel had no joy in this world but God. He did not seek anything else.
2- Mary and the mission:
How does Mary’s poverty transform her into an apostle, in charge of a mission?
In fact, if we read the gospels, all scenes that show the Virgin Mary present her as carrying on a mission.
There are four main scenes in the infancy narrative:
The annunciation, the visitation, the birth of Jesus, and the presentation at the Temple. There is also another scene, when Jesus was twelve years old and his parents lost him in the Temple. In the rest of the Gospel, especially in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there isn’t much else, except for the scene, with which you are familiar, when Mary came to look for Jesus among the crowd. The Gospel of John does not tell us about Jesus’ childhood, and it talks about Mary in two places but without naming her: at Cana of Galilee and at the foot of the Cross.
Let us consider these scenes.
Mary does not say a word in the Christmas pericope. In the whole Gospel, Mary spoke to people only one time, when she told the servants at the wedding in Cana to “do whatever he tells you.” Besides that, she did not talk.
The Gospel tells us nothing of the conversation she had with Joseph. Her conversation with the angel does not count because it is considered like a conversation with God himself. Also, there is no dialogue reported with Elizabeth either. Elizabeth talked about Mary, but Mary did not talk to Elizabeth.
With the Angel, she was talking to God, and she was talking to God also while visiting Elizabeth: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
At the wedding in Cana of Galilee she spoke with the God-man Jesus.
She did not talk to anyone, except to the servants, and what did she say? “Do whatever he tells you.” This means that you should be talking to Jesus and not to me. Your conversation should be with God. She does not mean that she does not want to talk to them, but that, in the end, it is God’s word that matters, and all other words are emptiness and poverty.
Is this, I wonder, our mission? Is it our mission today to tell people that Jesus is the Savior?
Was Mary not a missionary also in this way?
There is a lot more that can be said of Mary. Even if we met every Wednesday of the month of May to talk about Mary, there would still be more to say about her. We can talk about Mary the mother, her Immaculate Conception, her Assumption to heaven in body and soul, and all this could be discussed through the lens of her poverty. The same goes for Mary’s relationship with the Church, as we heard today in the reading from Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, how Mary is the Mother of the Church, the mother of the Lord, and the image of the Church. A lot more can be said, but I wanted today to discuss this aspect, Mary’s poverty, because we always talk about Mary the powerful, but she is powerful in her poverty. She is powerful thanks to God’s power in her, powerful with the power of the One who took body from her.
Let us thank the Lord together for this unique creature named Mary, because, by confessing her poverty, she has offered little – she does not have much to offer. She entirely offered whatever little she had, and thanks to this gift, she showered humanity with many blessings. Suffice it to say that she gave us Jesus, and through Jesus, we received the Holy Spirit and the Father.
Jesus opened the door for all of humanity to share in the life of the Trinity. This is great, and this poor woman played a part in it.
The more you experience the emptiness in your hands, the more freely you can move your hands and receive in them. The harder you grip something because you are afraid to drop it, the less able you are to receive other things.
A priest once said: “Do you know why Jesus, after rising from the dead, did not remove the wounds pierced by the nails in his hands? It is so his hands do not fill up with God’s gifts and become unable to receive more. It is so God’s grace would trickle through his hands down to us. It is an inexhaustible spring. But when we hold on to things and refuse to live our poverty, this means that we do not believe that God’s spring is inexhaustible. Mary believed that God’s spring is inexhaustible, and her life is a proof of that. The honor people give her, still to this day, is proof of that. But I must ask you to not offend Mary by taking away her poverty. Do not put her in God’s place. You would pain her if you stole her poverty from her.
Mary is poor, and that is why she is an apostle. She has nothing to lose because she has nothing, to start with.
Whoever gives of himself like she did will not lose himself, and no one can take your self away from you. Jesus was clear about that: no one can take this joy away from you.
So, please honor Mary by giving the rosary a very important place in your life – and we will talk later about the rosary. But do not pain Mary by taking away her poverty. This is because if we take away her poverty, we take away her freedom. Only she who knows she is poor can be free to the death. We have nothing to lose anyway, but we know that what we will win, we can never lose. We can never lose God.
Questions for reflection:
1- In your relationship with God, what are the things that impede this relationship and why you not give them up?
2- In the times when you have experienced your poverty, weakness, limitation, helplessness…did you also experience the power of God working through you? Give real-life examples.
3- We are a minority in the Middle East, but an important minority: we may not have a lot, but have we completely given the Lord whatever little we are? We, as minority, on the individual or group level, to what degree do we really accept this poverty, this minority status, and put it in the Lord’s hands so that he may be the Subject? If I were to talk about God in human terms, how able am I to say to him: I believe in your plan of salvation. What is yours (meaning, me), from what is yours (meaning, me), I offer you (meaning, me); not only for me, but for everything and everyone else.
Remember: the five loaves that the boy had, and which he offered to Jesus, were not multiplied so that Jesus himself would eat. The boy offered those loaves so that the five thousand people would eat.
Do not think that a lot is needed to feed many. We, the few, have to feed the many.
Only one person on earth said: “Take and eat. This is my body,” and fed the entire humanity. Otherwise, we are running toward a cliff, by accumulating more and more wealth. By swallowing his body, may death never be able to swallow us, God willing. Amen.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you are the Living One risen from the dead. In your mother’s womb you united your divinity with our humanity, and your humanity with our divinity. The divine and human natures in the unity of the person dwelled in the Virgin’s womb, and were nourished from this human power in order to seed in humanity a divine power. Grant us, Lord, that every time we receive you in communion we hold you and give you all that we have, so that we may be able to give you to our brothers and sisters as delicious food and pledge of the Kingdom. To you be glory forever, Amen.
Talk given to The Family of Saint Sharbel on May 2, 2007, the first Wednesday of May.
Fr. Dawood Kawkabany - Church of St Sharbel, Adonis.
http://www.ayletmarcharbel.org/content/Mary-the-poor
(This is a transcription of an audio recording of the talk, hence its colloquial style).
“Christ is risen. He is truly risen”
I chose to start my talk on Mary with this greeting.
Virgin Mary’s concern is always to remind us of Jesus. Regrettably, many times we are so taken with her that we forget Jesus. This does not please her and should not please us either.
Mary is not an extraordinary person. She is very ordinary. It is we who are not “ordinary,” in the pejorative sense of the term. The less “ordinary” we are, in the pejorative sense, the more we see her as extraordinary.
This is because whatever Mary was is what each one of use is supposed to be.
This is our basic vocation.
First part. What was Mary?
Those of you who celebrated the Divine Liturgy today or read today’s gospel reading have read about the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves of bread. This is an extremely meaningful event. Jesus does not ask little of what we have. He asks for the little we have. There is a difference.
He does not ask for $10 out of the million dollars you have. No. You have $10 that can barely buy you lunch, and Jesus would ask you to give him the whole $10. He, then, does not ask little of what we have. He asks for the little we have. Jesus only deals with poor people, and not with wealthy people who deign to give him only some of what they have.
Mary was the first of those poor people. True, she did say: “From now on all generations will call me blessed,” but she is also the one who said: “I am the handmaid of the Lord.”
What does “handmaid of the Lord” mean? It means that I am not even master my own self. Handmaid is female for slave. Can’t I say no to God? No, simply because, if I am not master of my own self, then I am not master of my own will either. I give God all that he gave me. All I have is my being, that of a handmaid. He can have all of me!
This is a wonderful idea. Let us meditate on it.
We highly honor Mary with prayers and hymns and bless her abundantly, and this is not wrong because she is indeed full of grace. Why? Because she knows that she has very little, her being as a handmaid, and yet she still offered her whole being.
She did not say to God: “Make me extraordinary so I can offer you something better.” She said: “I offer you the handmaid that I am.”
1- Mary, the poor one. This is the first point in my talk tonight that will help us understand Mary’s mission and the depth of her journey toward holiness.
Mary lived in obedience to the Lord, the obedience of the poor who cannot afford to say “no.” Not that she was unwillingly saying “yes,” but she did not believe that she had the right to say no. “For I am not my own master, I am not for myself, I am just a handmaid.”
The only one poorer that Mary is Jesus himself, with the simple difference that Mary only confessed her poverty. Jesus, on the other hand, became poor for us when he emptied himself and took the form of a slave. Jesus willed to become poor, while Mary, a human, confessed her poverty, no more, no less.
2- Virginity: Mary’s virginity expresses her poverty.
I do not wish to debate whether or not Mary had already decided to remain a virgin, even before the annunciation, and I do not want to speculate on this topic. But the fact is that Mary did remain a virgin. Even more, she made this virginity her own.
What is virginity? At first glance, it may sound terrible, because of the lack of offspring. What good is virginity, then, if it is only a lack of offspring? It is as if, even here, Mary confesses and acknowledges that she cannot, of her own powers, give real life. She can give biological life, like all women can, but she still sees this as poverty. There is more, but she cannot do it. It is precisely in this poverty that will be planted the Wealth, who is Life; will be planted Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ has been given to poor humanity through the person of this woman who lived in poverty till the end.
What I mean is that Mary saw that whatever she may do, even if she became a mother and had children, these children will eventually die like everybody else, and this is not Life. This still is poverty and death.
In this woman who accepted poverty by living her virginity was planted True Life, who will be planted even in the depth of Hell to conquer death. This is what it means that Mary’s virginity is an expression of her poverty.
3- Mary’s prayer expresses her poverty:
We discussed once the wedding at Cana of Galilee, and talked about how Mary did not say to Jesus “they have no more wine,” but said; “they have no wine.” This means that the hosts were poor. The difference between them and Mary is that Mary accepts her poverty, while they do not want to admit their poverty. This could be gleamed from what the headwaiter said: “you have kept the good wine until now? Where did you get this good wine? Are you the One who has the good wine?”
This “beggar” - and I do not mean this in a pejorative sense - named Mary is the one who made the presence of the good wine possible.
This poor woman named Mary, who cannot do anything for you, was the reason you have good wine. That is because she stood in her poverty before the Lord, as well as at the foot of the Cross.
Even her son is not hers. I have drawn your attention to this before. Not once does Jesus call her his Mother in the Gospel. He does not call her his, or himself hers. Do you see now how poor she is?
4- Mary at Pentecost: If you read the Pentecost passage closely, you notice that Mary is mentioned before this event had occurred. They were gathered there, praying with some women and 120 people. Mary was one of these women.
She is the one who believed in the resurrection, and yet does not set herself apart from the disciples who were afraid and full of doubts. She prayed with them and for them. She was present, and did not care whether or not she would be mentioned on the day the Holy Spirit descended. Surely, the poor woman who prayed at Cana also prayed on the day of Pentecost. That is because there formed a community, called Church, who now births her Son to the world.
Mary no longer had monopoly on Jesus, and she never had monopoly on him in the first place. The Church now became the one who births Jesus everyday in the Eucharist and outside the Eucharist, and it now became a Church who gives children to the Father through baptism.
The Lord made this poor woman a mother to us, poor ones.
Even more, Mary is the one who, more than anyone, experienced the presence of the Lord in her womb for nine months, even though she was not given what is normally given to other women in terms of romantic and physical intimacy…she is the one who was given this miraculous birth. She listened to the shepherds’ announcement. She heard what Heaven told them. She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.
She is the one who carried Truth himself in her womb, yet she received the truth from the shepherds who are rarely found in the synagogue on the Sabbath, who have barely heard of Scripture, and who are not endowed with the knowledge of the Mystery of faith. She, the poor one, learned from them, discovered, and experienced the Truth whom she herself gave to the world and to the shepherds.
It is amazing how ecclesial Mary was, even before the church was known, even before Jesus announced the Church.
Mary was ecclesial. She listened in order to enrich herself. She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.
If I were to discuss Mary’s poverty in other aspects too, it would take a very long time.
5- Mary, the mother:
Imagine a mother hearing her son say to her about another man: “This is your son.” And imagine this other man taking her into his home. She is the mother who looked for Jesus everyday in Palestine, and then, when Jesus was told: your mother and brothers want to see you, he replied: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Mary is just like all those people who know how to accept faith in poverty.
Put yourself in Mary’s shoes, and reflect on the poverty that the Virgin Mary lived. But, keep in mind that she is the poor one who glorified the Lord.
The best testimony that can be given about God’s work in our lives is poor Mary’s testimony: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Why? Not because he rewarded me for my virtues, or because I obeyed him; but because he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. I, his handmaid, magnify him.
Learn from her. Only your poverty can assure you that God loves you unconditionally.
If you had many virtues, you might think that God loved you for your virtues.
Or you might think that it is because of your education: God loves you because you are intelligent and you help advance humanity.
Or you may think it is because of your beauty that God loves you, because he made you superb.
Only your poverty can reveal to you the depth of God’s love, that he loves you for no reason at all.
Second part: Mary and holiness, Mary and mission.
1- Mary and holiness:
Mary always attributed acts in her life to the Subject, who is God.
She never attributed acts to herself.
Never once in the Gospel does she say that she did or will do something, or that she wants to do something, or is planning on doing something.
Let us look at the Magnificat: the only thing she wants to do is to magnify the Lord. She thanks, praises, and exults in the Lord, and nothing else, because He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. God is the Subject, and she is simply the direct object of his action.
From now on all generations will call me blessed: again, generations is subject, and Mary, direct object.
The Mighty One has done great things for me… dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart…lifted up the lowly…
The more she realized her poverty, the better she understood what it meant to be a creature. All she could do was wait for her Creator to complete his work of Creation.
In her journey toward holiness, Mary professed that God is the Verb.
Hence, the Greek word Logos is sometimes translated as Word, and sometimes as Verb. It is an action-word.
Mary’s holiness is the result of God’s action in her.
Strangely, all she did was to proclaim that God exalted her, elevated her, sanctified her…just proclaim…
Even when the Angel announced to her the birth of Jesus, he said to her: “Rejoice, you are full of grace.” Why? “The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid: you will be given a pregnancy, and you will give birth to a son.” Here she is the subject, but only after she has received and accepted the pregnancy.
She will call him Jesus: notice that when some actions were attributed to her (giving birth, naming), she asked: “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” She means that she needs a man by her side, if she were to be act.
True, the angel says, you will act, but through the power of the Holy Spirit.
On one hand, this idea places a big responsibility on us regarding our journey to holiness, but, on the other hand, it gives us a lot of hope.
“Big responsibility” means that I cannot easily accept what Jesus said: “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” We have only done our duty. Sometimes, even at work, we humble ourselves too much so that people say good things about us. Sometimes we work hard to get praise from people. Other times, when someone congratulates me on my work, I deny having anything to do with it, and I claim that I didn’t do any work, even though I did. If you did the work, admit it and keep walking. Do not stick around waiting for praise. “God is the Subject, not you.”
Saint Paul, in all his greatness, says in the second letter to the Corinthians: I have suffered more than the other apostles, I was flogged, I was imprisoned,” etc. But he ends by saying: “yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” (for what it’s worth, this last verse is actually from Galatians 2:20 – Abouna Rodrigue)
“Big responsibility” means that I must renounce more and more, day after day. Here I would like to say something very important: renunciation and material poverty are good, but sometimes they can be problematic. My poverty and renunciation may make me believe that I have truly made a sacrifice. But if I never really cared for certain things, like a new car or expensive clothes, and I never really cared about material possessions, then I mistakenly believe that I have renounced these things. Renunciation is on the inside. Undoubtedly, outer simplicity accompanies it, but what’s important is inner renunciation.
Often times we achieve outer simplicity, but lose inner simplicity.
What I am trying to say here is, do not think for one moment that this poverty is enough. This poverty frees you to the extreme, to the degree that, whatever God gives you, you still feel in need. It is then that God accomplishes in you much more than what you yourself can accomplish. What can you accomplish on your own, with your human limitations? Relative to what God can accomplish, it is like a tiny letter compared to the infinite, or like a grain of sand compared to the size of the universe.
Thanks to your poverty, you are able to allow God to accomplish things in you.
In any case, this is an important lesson to take from Saint Sharbel’s spirituality, this man intoxicated with the love of God.
Saint Sharbel had no joy in this world but God. He did not seek anything else.
2- Mary and the mission:
How does Mary’s poverty transform her into an apostle, in charge of a mission?
In fact, if we read the gospels, all scenes that show the Virgin Mary present her as carrying on a mission.
There are four main scenes in the infancy narrative:
The annunciation, the visitation, the birth of Jesus, and the presentation at the Temple. There is also another scene, when Jesus was twelve years old and his parents lost him in the Temple. In the rest of the Gospel, especially in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there isn’t much else, except for the scene, with which you are familiar, when Mary came to look for Jesus among the crowd. The Gospel of John does not tell us about Jesus’ childhood, and it talks about Mary in two places but without naming her: at Cana of Galilee and at the foot of the Cross.
Let us consider these scenes.
Mary does not say a word in the Christmas pericope. In the whole Gospel, Mary spoke to people only one time, when she told the servants at the wedding in Cana to “do whatever he tells you.” Besides that, she did not talk.
The Gospel tells us nothing of the conversation she had with Joseph. Her conversation with the angel does not count because it is considered like a conversation with God himself. Also, there is no dialogue reported with Elizabeth either. Elizabeth talked about Mary, but Mary did not talk to Elizabeth.
With the Angel, she was talking to God, and she was talking to God also while visiting Elizabeth: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
At the wedding in Cana of Galilee she spoke with the God-man Jesus.
She did not talk to anyone, except to the servants, and what did she say? “Do whatever he tells you.” This means that you should be talking to Jesus and not to me. Your conversation should be with God. She does not mean that she does not want to talk to them, but that, in the end, it is God’s word that matters, and all other words are emptiness and poverty.
Is this, I wonder, our mission? Is it our mission today to tell people that Jesus is the Savior?
Was Mary not a missionary also in this way?
There is a lot more that can be said of Mary. Even if we met every Wednesday of the month of May to talk about Mary, there would still be more to say about her. We can talk about Mary the mother, her Immaculate Conception, her Assumption to heaven in body and soul, and all this could be discussed through the lens of her poverty. The same goes for Mary’s relationship with the Church, as we heard today in the reading from Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, how Mary is the Mother of the Church, the mother of the Lord, and the image of the Church. A lot more can be said, but I wanted today to discuss this aspect, Mary’s poverty, because we always talk about Mary the powerful, but she is powerful in her poverty. She is powerful thanks to God’s power in her, powerful with the power of the One who took body from her.
Let us thank the Lord together for this unique creature named Mary, because, by confessing her poverty, she has offered little – she does not have much to offer. She entirely offered whatever little she had, and thanks to this gift, she showered humanity with many blessings. Suffice it to say that she gave us Jesus, and through Jesus, we received the Holy Spirit and the Father.
Jesus opened the door for all of humanity to share in the life of the Trinity. This is great, and this poor woman played a part in it.
The more you experience the emptiness in your hands, the more freely you can move your hands and receive in them. The harder you grip something because you are afraid to drop it, the less able you are to receive other things.
A priest once said: “Do you know why Jesus, after rising from the dead, did not remove the wounds pierced by the nails in his hands? It is so his hands do not fill up with God’s gifts and become unable to receive more. It is so God’s grace would trickle through his hands down to us. It is an inexhaustible spring. But when we hold on to things and refuse to live our poverty, this means that we do not believe that God’s spring is inexhaustible. Mary believed that God’s spring is inexhaustible, and her life is a proof of that. The honor people give her, still to this day, is proof of that. But I must ask you to not offend Mary by taking away her poverty. Do not put her in God’s place. You would pain her if you stole her poverty from her.
Mary is poor, and that is why she is an apostle. She has nothing to lose because she has nothing, to start with.
Whoever gives of himself like she did will not lose himself, and no one can take your self away from you. Jesus was clear about that: no one can take this joy away from you.
So, please honor Mary by giving the rosary a very important place in your life – and we will talk later about the rosary. But do not pain Mary by taking away her poverty. This is because if we take away her poverty, we take away her freedom. Only she who knows she is poor can be free to the death. We have nothing to lose anyway, but we know that what we will win, we can never lose. We can never lose God.
Questions for reflection:
1- In your relationship with God, what are the things that impede this relationship and why you not give them up?
2- In the times when you have experienced your poverty, weakness, limitation, helplessness…did you also experience the power of God working through you? Give real-life examples.
3- We are a minority in the Middle East, but an important minority: we may not have a lot, but have we completely given the Lord whatever little we are? We, as minority, on the individual or group level, to what degree do we really accept this poverty, this minority status, and put it in the Lord’s hands so that he may be the Subject? If I were to talk about God in human terms, how able am I to say to him: I believe in your plan of salvation. What is yours (meaning, me), from what is yours (meaning, me), I offer you (meaning, me); not only for me, but for everything and everyone else.
Remember: the five loaves that the boy had, and which he offered to Jesus, were not multiplied so that Jesus himself would eat. The boy offered those loaves so that the five thousand people would eat.
Do not think that a lot is needed to feed many. We, the few, have to feed the many.
Only one person on earth said: “Take and eat. This is my body,” and fed the entire humanity. Otherwise, we are running toward a cliff, by accumulating more and more wealth. By swallowing his body, may death never be able to swallow us, God willing. Amen.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you are the Living One risen from the dead. In your mother’s womb you united your divinity with our humanity, and your humanity with our divinity. The divine and human natures in the unity of the person dwelled in the Virgin’s womb, and were nourished from this human power in order to seed in humanity a divine power. Grant us, Lord, that every time we receive you in communion we hold you and give you all that we have, so that we may be able to give you to our brothers and sisters as delicious food and pledge of the Kingdom. To you be glory forever, Amen.
Talk given to The Family of Saint Sharbel on May 2, 2007, the first Wednesday of May.
