In Umbris Sancti Petri

In a previous comment I believe someone asked to hear a bit about Mary and our prayer life. I would like to approach this from two angles: Mary as an example of discipleship and prayer and in the next post Mary as Mediatrix (a female mediator).

Every time Mary appears in the Gospels she gives us an example of how we should live out our own lives as disciples of her son. I especially like to meditate on Mary's first and last words. Her first words in the Gospel are the fiat. "Let it be done unto me..." This is an example of how we should live out our relationship with God. Especially in our prayer lives, I think we are often dissapointed about our time spent in prayer because we want our prayer 'to be done according to our wills,' but the best time spent in prayer is time spent allowing God to do what he wills. Yes, this could even be a dry empty feeling prayer. Another crucial part of our lives that requires a personal fiat is the acceptance of our vocation in life. We must accept Marriage, Priesthood, or Consecrated Life. This means saying 'yes' to the one that God wants and at times this means saying 'no' to the one that I want.

The last words Mary speaks are at the wedding feast in Cana. Here she simply says to the servants "do whatever he (Jesus) tells you." In some sense these words are spoken to the whole world, because remember we are all called to become servants in our Fathers kingdom. She is also giving us an example. Our words as disciples of Christ should point others to Christ and not to ourselves. This is very difficult, but a good meditation about using the tongue correctly can be made by slowly reading and praying over the third chapter of James. Look for a piece on Mary as Mediatrix next time (then I will start the next review with the next post. Let me know if you would like to hear about a book on Mary).