For Mary and for Us

On a darkened night 12 years ago, I first heard the Ave Maria by Franz Biebl, performed below by the Smoky Hill High School Symphonic and Chamber Choirs. When I first heard it performed, it was sung by the St. Charles Schola, a well trained group of seminarians who knew their Latin well! I had just wrapped up two years of studying the mother tongue myself, so it was with a deep sense of awe that I sat in my pew, after taking the Son of God into my heart in the Eucharist, and took in also the words of the Angelus sung in Franz Biebl's piece.

I was completely blown away that night. It was one of those wow moments that change your life, add a layer of gravitas, lift you up to a new plateau, shift the paradigm, and adjust the focus, so that suddenly what you thought you clearly knew about God and Life and Yourself was blown to bits and reconstituted before your very eyes; clarified and reconfigured, better than you imagined it ever was.

The most stirring moment of the song (captured more in the seminarian's singing when I first heard it) was at the verse "et Verbum caro factum est... et habitavit in nobis" - and the Word was made flesh... and dwelt among us...

The voices hushed to a whisper and I felt the air electrify, angels hanging in deep amazement. She said yes!! Mary opened the door to the Bridegroom and let Heaven into her heart! No longer holding our breath, no longer in exile, we find the Savior has found a home in Mary, and through her now He comes to us in every Communion. What Adam and Eve had lost, Jesus and Mary have revealed! God wants to dwell among us, and better still, within us! He wants to be all ours and us all His! So let us speak with Mary that great consent. "Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum." - Be it done unto me according to Your Word. How's that for a New Year (and a New Life's) resolution? To open the gates to Divinity, to redemption, to healing, to mercy...

What a wondrous God we have, willing to pour Himself out into us weak and so often clueless creatures, for the sake of Love, for the rescue of our captive hearts. Come Lord Jesus!