My Homily for 8 Sept 26. Feast of the Birth of Mary – At the Threshold of Grace
Romans 8:28-30; Mt1:1-16, 18-23 [Genealogy of Jesus]
The Church celebrates Mary’s birth to honor the mother of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Mary’s birth signals the dawn of the fullness of time, the threshold of the great grace of salvation. Imagine now a great bridge, say – the Ravenel Bridge of Charleston, or the Brooklyn Bridge of New York, or the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco. Mary’s birth is like having the massive foundational structure of a bridge already set up but not yet passable. It still needs the final step of laying the road – that is Christ Himself, the only Mediator.
God has crossed the threshold of His divinity, reaching out towards humanity. The structural design is for it to withstand the final step of laying out the road and eventual crossing, the touching point of the human and divine.
Human frailty is rendered invulnerable with Mary’s immaculate conception. At her birth, as if everything is at a standstill, at that particular moment, nothing violates her humanity, for in it will the God-man take on human form. She stands still, incorruptible, so in her humanity itself receives the source and summit of all life.
Today’s Gospel tells of the ancestry of Jesus – of what both God and humanity are capable of. It’s sort of a strategic planning and actual laying out of the structural foundation leading to the completion, the birth of Christ, the penultimate of which is the mention of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
At Mary’s birth, humanity reaches the threshold of Grace. St Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, affirms that God co-operates with those he has called according to His purpose. May we, like Mary and all of the ancestors of Jesus, partake in and likewise impart the grace of redemption, for God continues to call, and we are recipients as much as we are instruments of the call. Every day is a new creation that God completes with, in, and through people of faith, hope, and love.
Today, on Mary’s birthday, we celebrate the special grace of new hope. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul speaks of how all are specially picked out by God. “We know that everything works together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” The last words also apply in a special way to Mary: “Those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified.” Mary, from the first moment of her existence, was totally conformed to the will of her Son, and so deserves the special glory which she merited after her death.
The birth of Mary signals the dawning of a new day, for she would in turn give birth to the Messiah. And for this, Mary is referred to as the ‘Stella Matutina’ – Star of the Morning. She is the sign of hope – for as the dawn ushers in the new day, Mary ushers in the coming of the Savior.
At each dawn, as we all come together at Vigils, let us, with Mary, welcome a new day of encounter with Jesus. Let us call on her that she may always lead us to Jesus, so we too may always be conformed to His will. Likewise, like Mary, may we too lead others to Jesus.
So today, on this feast of Mary’s birth, let us pray for her intercession: that as monks, we too may be generative of the monastic tradition, and as Christians, we may be generative of Christ’s presence at all times.
