Thinking about Mary

May the month of Mary, is traditionally a time when we remember and we pray especially to Mary.

“The Bible doesn’t tell us, of course, what Mary was doing when the messenger of God paid his visit. But I love the notion that Mary was already prayerfully steeping herself in the Word, long before Christ the Word ever became steeped in her. In depicting her this way, the medieval artists sought to convey the idea that although she couldn’t have known what lay ahead, Mary had already been preparing herself, making a space in her life for the presence of God.

Whatever it was that Mary was doing when Gabriel showed up with God’s wild invitation, her story challenges us [….] although we never know just what lies ahead, God is ever seeking a space within our lives. Within us.

Mary’s openness to the God of audacious invitations, along with her equally audacious “Yes,” beckons us to ask, what are we doing to prepare a space for God in our own lives and in my own self?”

How about you? How spacious is your life these days?

… I pray that we may each leave ourselves open to the God of wild surprises, and that we may be bearers of Christ in this world”.

The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart wrote:

“We are all mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.”

Theotokos (A Sonnet for Mary)

You bore for me the One who came to bless
And bear for all and make the broken whole.
You heard His call and in your open ‘yes’
You spoke aloud for every living soul.
Oh gracious Lady, child of your own child,
Whose mother-love still calls the child in me,
Call me again, for I am lost, and  wild
Waves suround me now. On this dark sea
Shine as a star and call me to the shore.
Open the door that all my sins would close
And hold me in your garden. Let me share
The prayer that folds the petals of the Rose.
Enfold me too in Love’s last mystery
And bring me to the One you bore for me.

~ Malcolm Guite, (2011)

See also:  The Presentation of Mary

(the main text is adapted from an extract written by Jan Richardson ‘Thinking about Mary’).