The great North American singer, Anna Mae Bullock, know on stage as Tina Turner, said: “But I believe we have a higher level of mentality within us, but we have to use the power in the right way.”
On January 1, the Octave Day of Christmas, the Church joyfully celebrates the solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.
The fifteen-year-old girl believed the angel’s message that she was chosen by the Most High to become the Mother of the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. Mary was the first person in history who utterly believed in God’s plan for her.
Thanks to God’s grace which overshadowed her (see Luke 1:35), Mary was able to say ‘yes’ to the angel’s invitation. She let God’s divine help strengthen her human will.
Today’s Gospel reading sheds light on an important virtue in Mary’s spiritual journey: meditation. In this frantic world we are living in it is essential that we find our prayer corner during the day, thanks to which we can let our minds and hearts be united with God. Saint Luke informs us that “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).
It was not enough that the Sacred Scripture instructs us that “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Gal 4:4). The revealed Word also shows us how Mary fulfilled this divine maternal role she was destined to live from eternity by the Divine Providence’s mandate. Mary’s continual meditation on the mystery of God incarnate, who lived in her for nine months, made it possible for her to fully experience the blessing which the Lord gave to Moses in the book of Numbers: “The Lord bless you and keep you: The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace” (Num 6:24-26).
Her mind was filled with God’s presence! That is why the famous Early Church Father and Doctor the Church, Saint Augustine of Hippo, writes: “Mary heard God’s word and kept it, and so she is blessed. She kept God’s truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb. The truth and the body were both Christ: he was kept in Mary’s mind insofar as he is truth, he was carried in her womb insofar as he is man; but what is kept in the mind is of a higher order than what is carried in the womb”.
Mary’s way of thinking highly clashes with our own manner of viewing reality. The busier we are the less we are thinking about God. The present Pope rightly lamented about this miserable mode with which we are conducting our shattered lives, precisely during his homily at Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter's Basilica of this year.
“The question of God never seems urgent. Our time is already completely full... Does God actually have a place in our thinking? Our process of thinking is structured in such a way that he simply ought not to exist. Even if he seems to knock at the door of our thinking, he has to be explained away ... There is no room for him. Not even in our feelings and desires is there any room for him. We want ourselves”. If we want to be happy, if we desire that our plans and purposes be anointed by God’s Holy Spirit, let us “be transformed by the renewal of our mind” (Rom 12:2). Let us give room to God in our lives by reflecting about and talking to him daily. Thus, adopting Mary’s very own mentality!
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap