August 16, 2009 Assumption of Our Lady Rev. 11:19, 12:1-6, 10; 1 Cor. 15:20-27; Lk. 1:39-56 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________   Readings:http://www.usccb.org/nab/081509b.shtml   ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________     Mary proclaims a song of thanksgiving not as an isolated person; but as the daughter of a people. God's liberating actions come from the lowly and the oppressed. The covenant between God and his people starts to be renewed in Mary. The joy which Mary is experiencing prepares her to proclaim the good news.   Mary sang of God's goodness and mercy. Her song of praise, the Magnificat, proclaims how much God has done for us, how faithful God has been through all the ages. It also reminds us how faithful God will be forever. Can Mary’s God truly be our Lord and our God -- the God who overturns the way the world works, who elects the least and the last to bring in the kingdom, whose judgment in every sense will save the poor, the wronged and the oppressed?   The gravity of Mary’s joy, the fact that she must choose to exult, reveals something else about grace. Giving ourselves over to God’s new order is painful at first, because we are guaranteed to lose parts of ourselves that we hold very, very tightly.   Someone once wrote that “The way of the cross is, day by day, to bear the burden of becoming who we really are – the person God creates. This is a process of dying to whatever blocks us from transforming love.” It is true: we take up this “way of the cross” whenever we allow our inmost to arrange our whole self. To create new life, we must be willing to empty ourselves out and begin anew. When the Lord makes a home in us, we may feel temporarily that we have lost our hold in this world. If only we let God make a home in us, if only we let him radiate his light from the centre of our souls, heaven will always prevail.   Mary’s song challenges to us to have courage, that we also might be brave enough to be open to God’s transforming grace. It invites us to courageously say “Not my will, but yours, Lord.” Not my will, but yours. Only when we have courage to surrender to grace, to welcome the Divine within us, only then can we be re-born for heaven as our true selves. Only then do we truly live the Incarnation.   Grace always comes in and if we let it, if we, like Mary, rejoice in God our Saviour, that grace will turn our world upside down. If we allow ourselves to live from our inmost, if we walk the terrain of our own inner heaven, we will find that, “God has been there before us. God’s name is written on every layer. Go to the place called barren. Stand in the place called empty. And you will find God there.”     <<   Previous: 19th Sunday of the year  |   Next: 21st Sunday of the Year >>     Go Back to SERMONS (Year B)