Yes to everything.

This is a re-post from last year's Lent (so long ago...). I've been reacquainting myself with my Mother in heaven. Or rather, she's been chasing me down lately. As May draws to a close, I wanted to honor her.

One of my Lenten disciplines will be to renew my consecration to Jesus through Mary in the mode of Louis de Montfort. The plan (emphasis on "plan") is to post the daily reflections (not all the prayers, though!) here. The three-week period of preparation starts this Thursday, March 4, but here's a little Marian reflection from Hans to get us going.

He's been discussing the foundation of contemplation, which is a listening to the Word of God in Scripture and the person of Christ.

He writes:

"The hearer par excellence is the virgin, who becomes pregnant with the Word and bears it as her Son and the Father's. As for herself, even as Mother she remains a handmaid; the Father alone is Lord, together with the Son who ish er life and who fashions it... She still carries him within herself, even after she has given birth to him; to find him, all she has to do is look into her heart, which is full of him."

I love the image of a virgin--a sort of symbol of purity, of a person who is completely emptied of all else (including herself) in order to be "full of him." Certainly it is an elevated vision of virginity, and not one we encounter on primetime!



He continues:

"With all the strength she can muster she listens to this Word as it grows more and more vast, divine and seemingly alien; its dimensions almost tear her asunder, yet it is for this, for everything, that she gave her consent right at the start. She lets herself be led where she 'does not wish to go'--so far is the Word she follows from being her own wisdom."

This section--right in the middle of a discourse on virginity!--speaks to me so much as a married woman trying to follow the Church's teaching (which is the Word of God in a certain form) on spousal love and fertility. Isn't it just a learning what my original vows meant? Every time I am led "where I do not wish to go" in this married life, I must remember that it was "for this, for everything, that I gave my consent right at the start."