We Have an Announcement to Make
You and I gain nothing from Mary’s yes unless we each begin to seek out and recognize and affirm the incarnate body of eternal Love in the fragile and fleeting stuff of our own daily existence. If only it were enough to say yes once a day, or once weekly, when we respond amen to the body of infinite Good on earth! Unfortunately, one daily amen is worth less than none at all if it betrays a lie at the heart of our lives: that we say yes with our lips, while our hearts, at every other moment, are far from him.
Archangel Gabriel, 1130 - 1200 AD
A little over two thousand years ago, an Angel delivered a message to a young woman. Most of us know the content of his announcement: You will conceive and bear a son… the child to be born will be holy and will be called the Son of God. Most of us also know how Mary responded to this message, with a phrase that expresses the summit of human freedom: yes.
Today each of us will receive many proposals, messages, and announcements. In all their variety, perplexity, and cacophony, they will each convey the exact same tidings:
You – who sit at your desk, or on your couch, or cross-legged on your yoga mat, or in the front seat of your car – you will conceive and bear – in your thoughts and in your words, in what you do and in what you decide not to do…
in the spreadsheet you fill out,
in the diaper you change,
in the weeds you pull up,
in the teen you teach to drive,
in each vaccination you give,
during each audition,
as you scrub the bathroom tiles,
with each stamp you affix,
with each stroke on your keyboard,
and in all the memos you read
– a son… the Son of God.
You and I gain nothing from Mary’s yes unless we each begin to seek out and recognize and affirm the incarnate body of eternal Love in the fragile and fleeting stuff of our own daily existence. If only it were enough to say yes once a day, or once weekly, when we respond amen to the body of infinite Good on earth! Unfortunately, one daily amen is worth less than none at all if it betrays a lie at the heart of our lives: that we say yes with our lips, while our hearts, at every other moment, are far from him.
Christ is present in the feet of the person who delivers the mail, the emails of my accountant, the eyes of the barista, the hands of my daughter, the voice of my boss, the heart of the person I like least...
But, but, but… my postman is incompetent, the accountant misses deadlines, the barista is surly, my daughter slapped me, the boss just fired me, my neighbor gossiped about me, and everyone believed her.
Nonetheless, Gabriel announces to you, and to me, that the Holy Spirit intends to overshadow each of these circumstances and that Christ will be born in them, whether we find them convenient or destructive.
Some might say that Mary’s own immaculate conception conferred on her a strength that allowed her earthly life to manifest a continuous fiat, while we, poor slobs, are incapable of becoming a walking talking yes. But let’s not fool ourselves; once baptized, you and I can repeat, with King David, there is no thing I lack… We might tremble at these words because of all the responsibility they imply.
Responsibility: the urgency to respond.
When the mail carrier drops a letter into a puddle, or delivers a package for someone who moved out over a decade ago, or feeds your ebay purchase to the neighbor’s dog, saying yes to Christ’s concrete and fleshly presence in your interaction with him does not mean endorsing incompetence.
Instead, we’re invited to recognize and affirm every slightest and most ephemeral spark of Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice, and Love that waits, with divine patience, to be born in us, given to us.
These glints require kindling before they can burst into a conflagration: I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already aflame!
How will you respond?
You Won’t Miss the Burgers
Annunciation (detail), by Matthias Stom
by Suzanne M. Lewis
In 2017, I noticed a sore on my tongue.
By Sunday, October 1, 2017 (the feast of St Thérèse, my Confirmation namesake and special friend), my oral pain was intense as I had the joyful task of thanking each of our speakers and volunteers for their rich contributions and gifts of self throughout that beautiful long weekend at Pittsburgh’s St. Paul Cathedral, where we’d just held our 6th annual Festival of Friendship. I didn’t suspect, then, that two weeks later, on October 15 (Teresa of Avila’s feast), I would call my husband from outside an oncologist’s office to say the three-word sentence that no one wants to speak or hear: “I have cancer.”
In the waiting room before one of my chemo infusions, I met a woman wearing a wide apron, in which she carried her own IV bag that provided a slow drip and allowed her to live at home while receiving treatment. She had arrived for her periodic changing of the bag, and began to explain to me how the medicine she was receiving had changed the flavors of food: “A hamburger just isn’t a hamburger anymore, you know? It tastes funny, like. And forget nachos! I can’t enjoy the taste of my favorite meals. I tell you, if the cancer comes back after this, I’m going to refuse treatment. I’d rather die than live like this.”
This past year, on October 1st, it felt particularly gratifying to kick off the month-long online 2020 Festival of Friendship by offering a panel discussion honoring St. Thérèse and St. Teresa, as well as Edith Stein and Mother Teresa, four “boss” saints who have had such an enormous impact on the world. Only two weeks earlier, my cancer doctors at Cleveland Clinic had pronounced that marvelous and golden word: remission. I knew these four women were at least partly responsible for my healing.
But I’ve also wondered about that woman, whose life meant so little to her that she would trade it for the taste of a Big Mac. Meanwhile, throughout this year, our society’s many failures to respond generously to the exigencies of the pandemic have uncovered a different sort of cancer: despite our stated belief in the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” there are numerous signs that the particular human lives of our fellow citizens do not matter to many of us. This year’s Festival of Friendship addressed this problem from multiple angles, including a focus on the inestimable value of elderly persons; ethical concerns arising from the pandemic; restorative justice in Brazil; and music produced by Black female composers, poets, and vocal artists. These events each revealed a common root cause for the evident disinterest in the lives and well-being of our fellow citizens: a fundamental apathy toward one’s own, unique, God-given life.
At some point, in the experience of each and every authentically religious person, a luminous question arises. This question carries with it all the wonder, all the longing, and all the curious hope expressed in Mary’s query to the angel, “How can this be?” (Lk 1:34). The same astonishment reverberates in Elizabeth’s amazed exclamation, “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:43).
Who am I that You are mindful of me? (cf. Ps 8:4). If you have never asked God some version of this question, then you’ve also never allowed Christ’s own question – Are not all the hairs of your head counted? (cf. Lk 12: 6-7) – to sink down into the roots of your being and startle you out of your petty worldliness. You may engage in all sorts of religious practices, but you haven’t yet embarked on the adventure of a truly religious life. Only after you’ve made a habit of viewing yourself with the esteem God has for you, can you turn your gaze to others and recognize that the Lord cherishes each human life as fiercely and as wholly and as astonishingly as he loves you. Without this intuition, you cannot fulfill Christ’s commandment to love one another as he has loved you.
When you – one lone person – begin to ask this question (“Who am I that You are mindful of me?”), your life becomes something new, something exceptional. Christ refers to this as an “abundant life” (cf. Jn 10:10) or as “the hundredfold here below” (cf. Mt 19:29). With this hundredfold, you develop an endurance you can’t explain and discover a patience you could not produce through force of will. Your creativity grows as you see an increase in your desire to address the predicaments and wounds of others. Soon, another person, unbidden, joins with you. One by one, others see and are magnetically attracted to the two of you. Together you will each roll up your sleeves and take the small, possible steps indicated by the boundless esteem for life you share. You will “start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible” (St. Francis of Assisi). Believe me, you will not miss the hamburgers when this happens.
Welcome to your one wild and precious life.