In anticipation of this coming Sunday’s Mother’s Day, we celebrate all of you as our Prayer Guild members who are mothers as well as joining you in giving thanks for your own mothers. We also take advantage of this occasion and invite you to reflect with us today upon the Blessed Virgin Mary and her elder clousin Elizabeth; and their meeting when Mary visited Elizabeth (Luke 1: 39-56).
Given God’s custom and practice of using ordinary human beings to help realize God’s extraordinary design in and for our world, both of these woman played crucial roles in God’s plan of salvation through the persons of their sons, John the Baptist and Jesus.
In the affirmative responses of their mothers to God’s messengers, the impossible (Mary unmarried; Elizabeth beyond child-bearing age) became possible. In living-out these reflections today, we’ll come to learn more deeply how God is calling and inviting us to be God’s Good News for others.
Mary spoke her Magnificat (Song of Praise) during her visit with Elizabeth; and both recognized and named what is was for Mary to have made the impossible, possible through her “Yes”: “All will call me happy because of the great things that God has done for me”. (Taken from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 1, Verses 48 to 49.)
Likewise, following John the Baptist’s birth, his father Zechariah spoke his prophecy (for himself and Elizabeth) in response to God for having called him and Elizabeth into parenthood for John in their old age: “You, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High God to tell his people that they will be saved”. (From the Gospel of Luke, Chapter one, verses 77 and 78)
Both Mary and Zechariah here are witnessisng to and proclaiming that God is faithful to God’s promises – the very same message that their sons will proclaim in their respective earthly ministries. Similar to what happens to us when we try to live-out the Scriptures proclaimed in our Liturgies in our everyday lives, we ask ourselves here: What are Mary and Zechariah trying to tell us today?
Very simply, they’re reminding us that God has a unique role for each of us to play in bringing-about God’s design in our world; and that our God each day is waiting to surprise us as God makes what seems the impossible, possible in us and through us in relationships with others.
