My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.
I don't think it was an easy task for Mary to be the child of God.
You see,
She was having a child out of wedlock and for many a big taboo at the time and still is today.
And yet we see that in Elizabeth somebody recognizes what Mary is doing and somebody realizes the great honor that had befallen Mary.
Now I don't think it was just by chance that God said,
Okay,
I choose you.
God didn't play Pokemon and just took the best or the closest.
Mary was predestined to get the opportunity and thank God she took it.
Thank God she said yes when the angels came to her,
When the angel came to her and said,
The Lord has chosen you and she embraced that.
Knowing full well that it was not going to be an easy life,
An easy journey.
I wonder if she knew at the time the anguish that she would have to suffer.
Then we see the thing that I think so many of us are missing in life at the moment and it is rejoicing in the Lord.
Through being ostracized,
Perhaps through knowing that things are not going to be easy,
Through having a difficult life,
Mary still then says,
My soul rejoices because God has chosen me.
And isn't it such a beautiful,
Beautiful lesson for us today?
That Mary was chosen for a very specific task and that task was to carry our redemption in her.
To carry Jesus Christ,
Who would be our redemption,
Who would teach us that all these rules and ideas that we have about God are not necessarily true,
That there are so many different expressions of God that the only thing that really truly matters is love,
Unconditional love.
And Mary was the one to manifest that,
To bring that message from God or to bring the messenger from God to us.
We see in her life that she never stops.
We see that Mary is there when Jesus performs his first miracle and he actually does it at her behest.
I think in society today,
We downplay the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
We downplay the fact that she was not just a womb.
She was the mother of Christ.
And because of that,
She took an active role in his life and an active part in his formation.
As a human being,
She took care of him.
We see Mary at the cross.
And today we see Mary in her assumption.
The beauty of this is that she has not left us.
In her love,
She is still there praying for us,
Just like all our beloved ones who have passed pray for us.
Mary has an exalted place in heaven.
A beautiful thing to me about Catholicism,
About believing in ritual and right,
Is something that I am rediscovering.
Catholicism is such a big,
Big thing.
Christianity,
God,
Well,
Yeah,
God is just God is.
But there are so many different things that pop up during different times in our lives.
And for me at the moment,
It's a rediscovery of the rosary.
Every time I prayed,
There's something new that I discover.
Maybe something that I had forgotten.
But every time I pray the rosary,
I am renewed in my all of the Lord.
And I am renewed in the love that Mary had for God.
An example of trusting.
An example of not knowing what the future is going to hold.
But saying to God,
My soul still rejoices in you because you are God.
Doesn't it sound familiar,
Not knowing what the future is going to hold?
Seeing things fall apart,
Seeing our lives just not turning out the way that we thought they would.
Four years ago,
Who would have thought that we would be sitting standing here in an empty chapel devoid of people,
Still filled with the presence of the Lord,
Though.
And though you are all far away,
We are all in communion with God at the moment.
And that is so beautiful.
It is not what we had hoped for necessarily.
Yet this is all part of God's plan.
And I hope that today with Mary,
We can also say,
I rejoice because we know that there is reason for this chaos.
We know that somewhere,
Somehow there is balance in the universe.
And where we are now is perfect.
Where we are now is part of perfection because we are all part of this greatness that is God.
This greatness that is not confined to somebody way out there in the heavens looking down on us,
But maybe somebody,
Something that is looking out from inside of us as well,
As well as from there and from every single viewpoint possible.
And it's too big for us to really grasp.
Try it sometime.
See how quickly you become overwhelmed when you try and think about the greatness of God.
If you try and think of what is the expanse of the Lord,
I usually end up full of panic because as our awareness grows and as my awareness then goes up and I think and think and think,
I reached a stage where my mind cannot fathom the infinity of the Lord.
Then I just come back and I feel like nothing.
I feel like nothingness and yet we see that we are not nothing.
If we didn't matter,
If God didn't love us,
He wouldn't have sent his angel to young Essene to carry the child of the Lord so that we could shed the darkness of not knowing so that we could start forgetting who and what we are not.
And my hope is that when we pass the mortal realm into the immortal that we will then see what we truly are and what God truly is.
Amen.
