July 26: OUR LADY OF FAITH
Our Lady’s life fulfilled the true goal of all living: her great achievement was to do the will of God—her vocation, as ours, is to live by FAITH. Every appearance of Mary on the Gospel scene has some connection with the will of God, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to Thy word.” During Christ’s infancy we have no recorded words of Mary, but her actions bespoke her magnanimous Faith. When the shepherds and the Wise Men came, she pondered things in her heart. When after forty days she brought her Child to the Temple and was told by Simeon of the “sword of sorrow” that would pierce her heart, she accepted, as also when the will of God was made known to St. Joseph for the escape into Egypt, and later for the return to Nazareth.
When the twelve-year-old Boy Jesus remained behind in the temple, she accepted in humble submission to God’s will His mysterious answer: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” and “she kept all these things carefully in her heart.” Mary walked by Faith and she lived by it. She had to make acts of Faith each day to accept the divinity of her Son, flesh of her flesh. With the exception of the Annunciation, the great signs given were for others, not for her—no need for extraordinary things to make Mary’s Faith grow.
During Jesus’ boyhood, when he, “advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God and men,” she too advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God and men, particularly so in her FAITH. When the public life of Christ began, Mary was there at Cana as well as at Calvary. Christ’s pronouncement, “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it,” covers all for Mary’s perfect Faith-life.
The Magnificat is Our Lady’s hymn of thanksgiving to God; she is blessed in her maternity as well as in her spiritual motherhood at the foot of the Cross. The last recorded event of Mary’s life was the Descent of the Holy Ghost in the upper room: “All these with one mind continued steadfastly in prayer with the women and Mary the Mother of Jesus.”
Mary’s supreme achievement in life was to hear the word of God and to do it. She had to walk in Faith. Faith is the “evidence of things that do not yet appear.” Mary’s life was a steady progress of Faith as God communicated to her more and more of His secrets.
Faith will one day give place to sight in the joy of the vision of paradise; for Mary, our Mother, the timeless woman is to be found at the side of Christ, body and soul, in heaven. Mary’s concern in Heaven is the same she had on earth—to do the will of God, and by her prayers, by her living presence, she is still advancing the salvation of all her children, of all of us, in Heaven.
From the Woman in Orbit - A Timeless Marian Treasure Compiled By Sr. Manetta Lamberty, S.C.C.
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