8 October 2022
Saturday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel, Jesus corrects a woman who suggests that the Incarnation was a source of blessing that redounded primarily to the one person who received him into her virginal womb and nursed him at her own breasts. It is not wrong for us to recognize in Mary an exalted and perfect example of discipleship and obedience to the will of God; she is, after all, rightly proclaimed to be “blessed” and “most highly-favored” by the Archangel Gabriel in the Incarnation. But it would be wrong to understand this to place Mary in the center of the story or to elevate her on a pedestal as someone who is unapproachable in her perfection and thus not relatable to those of us who come after her. Instead, quite the opposite is true.
Before the Blessed Virgin Mary was a perfect mother, she was a perfect disciple, and before she conceived the Lord in her womb, she had already emptied herself in perfect humility before God. Jesus is truly born of her in the flesh, and everything that is human passes through her to him. She is thus an empty vessel who perfectly contains what she is given even as she offers it entirely to God.
As the perfectly lowly one, Mary holds nothing for herself and instead offers the Word of God entirely to each of us who are given to her as sons and daughters. When we later disciples of Jesus hear the Word of God proclaimed to us, we experience this same fullness whenever we, like Mary, offer ourselves to God to dispose according to his eternal providence as she did.
Let us approach Mary with perfect hope as empty vessels to ask her intercession before her Son, that we too may pour ourselves out each day in works of love for those who are most in need and so come to possess a faith in the providence of God that more closely resembles that of Our Blessed Mother.