Dec. 12, 2013 Thursday: Our Lady of Guadalupe
"My dear little son, I love you. I desire you to know who I am. I am the ever-virgin Mary, Mother of the true God who gives life and maintains its existence. He created all things. He is in all places. He is Lord of Heaven and Earth. I desire a church in this place where your people may experience my compassion. All those who sincerely ask my help in their work and in their sorrows will know my Mother's Heart in this place. Here I will see their tears; I will console them and they will be at peace. So run now to Tenochtitlan and tell the Bishop all that you have seen and heard." -Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego, 1531
Listening to our Lady requires deep faith in her involvement in my life, in her
concrete plan for me. I must listen to her voice, the voice of Wisdom, daily, not just once a year on a retreat, or in those occasional moments when I am so moved. If I accept her love for me, if I accept the fact that she has chosen me, then she and the grace of God will do "great things for me" (Luke 1:49 - RSV).
Though both Juan Diego and Mother Teresa first said "No, not me," to Our Lady, insisting that they were not good enough or strong enough, in the end they chose to trust in her intercession and in God's power, and miracles of grace began to take place in their lives. We, too, need an awareness, both of our nothingness and also of the fact that she loves us and chooses us in God's name. Instead of looking at ourselves, we can gaze upon her at our side and can say: "Here I am . . . send me!" (Is 6:8 - NAB). Nothing in us surprises or repels her. Instead, she wraps us in her love and sends us out to build our corner of the kingdom.
The same God who loves us as we are also loves us to much to leave us as we are. Perhpas because we tend to hold to ideas about God that reflect our own suppositions and fears, more than God's self-revelation. We reduce God to our own dimensions, ascribing to him our own reactions and responses, especially our own petty and conditional kind of love, and so end up believing in a God cast in our own image and likeness.
But the true God, the living God, is entirely "other":. Precisely from this radical otherness derives the inscrutable and transcendent nature of divine love-- for which our limited human love is but a distant metaphor. God's love is much more than our human love simply multiplied and expanded. God's love for us will ever be mystery; unfathomable, awesome, entirely beyond human expectation.
Precisely because God's love is something "no eyes has seen, nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived" (1 Cor 2:9), Mother Teresa meditated on it continuously, and encouraged us to do the same, to continue plumbing this mystery more deeply. To this end she invites us: "Try to deepen your understanding of these two words, 'Thirst of God.;”
― Fr. Joseph Langford
Listening to our Lady requires deep faith in her involvement in my life, in her
concrete plan for me. I must listen to her voice, the voice of Wisdom, daily, not just once a year on a retreat, or in those occasional moments when I am so moved. If I accept her love for me, if I accept the fact that she has chosen me, then she and the grace of God will do "great things for me" (Luke 1:49 - RSV).
Though both Juan Diego and Mother Teresa first said "No, not me," to Our Lady, insisting that they were not good enough or strong enough, in the end they chose to trust in her intercession and in God's power, and miracles of grace began to take place in their lives. We, too, need an awareness, both of our nothingness and also of the fact that she loves us and chooses us in God's name. Instead of looking at ourselves, we can gaze upon her at our side and can say: "Here I am . . . send me!" (Is 6:8 - NAB). Nothing in us surprises or repels her. Instead, she wraps us in her love and sends us out to build our corner of the kingdom.
The same God who loves us as we are also loves us to much to leave us as we are. Perhpas because we tend to hold to ideas about God that reflect our own suppositions and fears, more than God's self-revelation. We reduce God to our own dimensions, ascribing to him our own reactions and responses, especially our own petty and conditional kind of love, and so end up believing in a God cast in our own image and likeness.
But the true God, the living God, is entirely "other":. Precisely from this radical otherness derives the inscrutable and transcendent nature of divine love-- for which our limited human love is but a distant metaphor. God's love is much more than our human love simply multiplied and expanded. God's love for us will ever be mystery; unfathomable, awesome, entirely beyond human expectation.
Precisely because God's love is something "no eyes has seen, nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived" (1 Cor 2:9), Mother Teresa meditated on it continuously, and encouraged us to do the same, to continue plumbing this mystery more deeply. To this end she invites us: "Try to deepen your understanding of these two words, 'Thirst of God.;”
― Fr. Joseph Langford
