Contemplative Focus
Our Lady Of Mount Carmel
This year Our Lady is hearing our prayers about the downturn of the world's economy, the threat of a new flu pandemic, continuing wars, and weather that is more destructive than ever. Except for on-going war, we didn't expect these things to happen. Our jobs and investments seemed safe enough, the flu of former years was bad enough, and the effects of global warming were still being argued. For many of us surprise sweeps us off our emotional feet and makes change or suffering even harder to take.
Our Lady knows all about surprises. As a young woman she didn't expect to have her life turned around by the life of Jesus. She had to wonder when the rest of the family thought he was unbalanced, and how could she have guessed that he would die in infamy on a cross? How did she handle it?
In the "I'm OK, you're OK" era of a few years ago, one of its tenets suggested that there are three ways we tend to respond to suffering or anything else. We can respond as a helpless child and whine our complaint, we can respond as a parent and demand whatever we want, or we can respond as an adult.
Everything that we know about Mary tells us that she met the challenges of life with a maturity beyond her age. She measured reality with a deep faith and responded to God's love with total self-giving.
When we are faced with the pain of a life-changing challenge, instead of "Why me?" or "Not me," if we can ask "How is this a grace for me?" we will conserve energy for the work at hand. It amounts to taking hold of the cross of our current reality with both hands and freeing ourselves to do what we can to grow-turning the cross into a plow. It is more than positive thinking; it is an act of faith in our Creator, whose will for us is union with God.
Suffering tends to stop us in our tracks and make us wonder what life is all about. We are here to incarnate God. Praying is spending time with God, letting God's Spirit in us break through. Mary pondered and prayed and received the grace she needed for every move. Our lives will include change, sometimes the crazies and crucifixion, but always the resurrection. And resurrection does not mean pie in the sky; it means that bit by sometimes bitter-bit we are being transformed into the image of God.
By saying yes to life's daily demands, Mary made room in her life for God and for us. We may be walking on water, but the Star of the Sea gave birth to "the way the truth and the life" to keep us going. When we hear ourselves saying, "I don't know what to pray for anymore," it is time to remember that the same Spirit that guided Mary "prays in us for what we don't even know how to ask." God is always at work in us.Elizabeth Meluch, ocd
Oldenburg Carmel
