It is July
16 ... IT IS THE FEAST OF OUR LADY, QUEEN OF MOUNT CARMEL
Do we call
her Mother? For St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face Mary is
"much more Mother than Queen."
"If a
child is to cherish his mother, she must cry with him and share his
sorrows."
Knowledge
and love can only deepen for our tender Mother Mary when we seek wisdom about
her from her Sacred Spouse: Spirit Lord.
In prayer,
He may direct our thoughts by drawing us into the revelations about our
Beloved Mother that He has inspired in holy souls throughout the centuries.
Through His Wisdom, revealed through them, a contour of her gentle, sweet
features begins to take shape.
Mary was
described by St Louis de Montfort as "our powerful Sovereign, our
beloved mistress, ... the world of God."
We have
therefore a world of reflections to explore in our search to glimpse
her beauty: her interior silence, her profound humility, the light of her
faith that will shine through the darkness of our mind, her total
self-emptiness, her willing enslavement to God's Will. When we accept Mary as
our Spiritual Mother, she will "reveal our thoughts" (Luke 2) to us
and we begin to grow in self-knowledge, that gift which gives us deep humility
under the Gaze of God.
There is an
abyss between God Who is Infinite, Numen, and we, who are finite. The depths of
the abyss are highlighted in a conversation between Our Father and St
Catherine of Siena. The Father asked her: "Do you know, my daughter, who
you are, and who I am? ... You are she who is not; I am He Who is."
1200 years
before God illumined Catherine about her finiteness, her nothingness, the
Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary at the Annunciation. When we stand, in
unobtrusive silence listening to their dialogue, it becomes clear to
us that Mary, the Immaculata, the God-bearer, the Hodogetria, was fully
aware that she was the one "who is not." We hear her describing
herself as the "handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:38).
This word,
"handmaid", holds profound meaning. We remember that this was the
same ancient word that St. Paul used to describe the Savior in Philippians 2:7:
Jesus "emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave, (doulos)
being born in the likeness of men..."
Mary His
Mother, the self-described handmaid, the douly of the Lord,
the bondslave of God, His total possession, the one whose Owner had all rights
to do with her as He willed, even and including should His Will be to take her
life.
Mary was
empty of self. She was, as it were, the "prelude" (St John Paul II)
to her Son's total self-emptiness, God's Doulos.
And God
accepted His Son's self-sacrificial death on the Cross, Christ, the Saving
Victim.
Mary, Queen of Carmel, embodies the beauty of a Carmelite heart and life in her
love for the Saving Victim. In her self-emptiness, Mary embodies the being who
could be filled with God. It is Spirit Lord Who "opens her lips and her
mouth declared His praise" at the Visitation.
Blessed
Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus OCD wrote that, "prayer finds its
supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it."
Because she was totally empty of self, Mary's prayer was filled with
supernatural efficacy, with a faith that animated every thought, word, action
that she made. Mary will gently mother us into an awareness of the abyss
of our finiteness, helps us to offer ourselves as God's doulos/douly,
leads us into the wisdom of self-knowledge where our awareness of our
nothingness deepens in the perspective of the Infinite Who is God.
If the
awareness of our nothingness nips at our spiritual pride and disheartedness
begins to lurk in the depths of such self-knowledge. St. Therese of the
Child Jesus and the Holy Face encourages us:
"You,
Lord, will descend to my nothingness and transform that nothingness into living
fire.....and even when I have nothing....I will give Him this
nothing."
And so, we
may stand gazing into the vast abyss between the Infinite Who is, and the
finiteness of we, "who are not". With St Therese, we may humbly
offer all that we are to God ... and give Him our nothing.
With Mary as
our Queen of humility, we offer our Yes, ourselves, to be His douly,
His doulos, to do with as He Wills.
And the
mighty power of Spirit Lord will rush into our depths, fill our souls with
Himself to the capacity pre-ordained by God, and transform our
"nothingness into living fire".
All who meet
us, every moment of our days, will touch God as He moves in and through us
and all will taste His sweetness as He transforms us into His own Image. And He
will draw souls to God through our "nothing" that He fills with
Himself.
How?
When He
fills the measure of ourselves that we give to Him, that measure becomes the
property of Spirit Lord. He has one Desire....to draw us into winning souls for
God and that Desire begins to propel us at disconcerting moments. We may be
watching a tense TV movie when we feel His unmistakable invitation to join Him
in prayer. Ten minutes before the exciting conclusion of the
movie.
We obey,
take ourselves off into solitude with Him and at the knee of Mary, we pray an
urgent Decade of the Rosary......and our great, great grandchild, yet to be
born, who will only ever see photographs of us, will be snatched by God away
from a life of drugs, or pornography, or alcohol. St Therese teaches us that
prayer soars beyond space and time and God already owns the decades where our
great grandchild moves. What was, what is and what is yet to be are all
one in Him. Through our small sacrifice, united with in and through Christ
Jesus' ultimate Sacrifice, we have won the soul of our loved one.
God
has gratefully accepted the little space of ourselves that we have given Him,
filled it with Himself and His Desire for souls, and then waits
to reward us in unimaginable ways for doing something that He gave us
the power to do in the first place.
And we begin
to understand how he transforms our “nothingness into living fire”, even beyond
space and time.
More words
from St. John Paul II come to our mind: “Prayer united with sacrifice is the
most powerful force in human history.”
Mary was
filled with self-emptiness. And filled with God.
Mary: "zealous
for the glory of the one true God and the sanctification and salvation of
souls"; Mary: the "Woman"-made-prayer; Mary: whose
sacrificial suffering from the "sword" that pierced her heart so
that she could reveal our thoughts to us; Mary: "united with Christ
Crucified and His omnipotent prayer as Saving Victim"; Mary: the pure and
most powerful intercessor for all of God's children for whom the Savior
shed His Precious Blood; Mary: whose "adoration and
contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity" is inexhaustible;
Mary, filled with Love Himself ...
Mary, Mother, Queen of Mount Carmel, pray for us.
(Quotes
used in the final paragraph are from the ancient charism of the Discalced
Carmelite Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel)