Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary

[15 August 2009]

Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2009
92nd anniversary of the birth of Oscar Romero

It seems as though every year around this time, I find myself looking up at the sky, wanting to see a shooting star. Of course it is the season of the Perseids, the annual meteor shower, that graces the second week of August. It just seems right to stand outside, looking heavenward, hoping to see a falling star.

Even though it is an annual celestial occurrence, scientifically noted, I love the coincidence that the meteor shower always happens the week of that we observe the feast of the Virgin Mary. After all, we celebrate the feast of the woman who was the God-bearer. It is almost impossible not to be partly transported to Christmas Eve, when we look heavenward to find the guiding star. It is almost impossible in the middle of summer not to think of Mary with her new-born child, and want to touch the hope that comes with that moment, found in a bright star.

My mind jumps to the heavens again. Whenever the weather is going to change, the Fairbanks Museum guys speak of a disturbance in the skies. The disturbance might be halfway across the country in Minnesota, but we know that eventually it will make its way to Vermont and do whatever it is going to do.

God’s asking Mary to be the God-bearer truly was a moment of Holy , heavenly Disturbance. Did Mary have any idea when she said YES to God just what sort of a disturbance was going to happen in her world? Did she have any idea really that the child she was going to bear would turn her world upside down? Did she understand how her life would be forever changed by that conversation with the angel?

Her words certainly speak of that upheaval. Even at the moment of saying YES to God, Mary proclaims outrageous words of reversals. And I still wonder, Did she really know what she was doing, what she was saying? Did she really want the world to be so changed? How did she do it? How did she trust?

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Today also is what would have been Archbishop Oscar Romero’s 92nd birthday. I can see the decorations and signs that surely have been placed at his tomb in the cathedral crypt in San Salvador. Even though the powers that be gussied up his tomb in 2005 and tried to block it off from world-wide pilgrims, I am sure that the people have prevailed and have connected with their saint. (The tip of his mitre in the bronze relief that makes up his new tomb has already become burnished from people, including myself, touching it in attempts to connect with Romero.) Romero exemplifies what it means to say YES to God in the way Mary did, and how that YES leads to holy disturbances that create upheaval in the community, upheaval that leads to a more just society. Not all of us, however, will be martyred as was Romero for saying YES to God.

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I sometimes struggle with complacency. I wrestle with how I do or don’t say YES to God with the same openness and honesty that scripture portrays Mary doing. I tend to gravitate away from Holy Disturbances.

So am I surprised when in today’s mail I receive a publication that has the following prayer? It is a four-fold Franciscan blessing and the only change I am going to make in it is to change the pronouns from ‘you’ to ‘us’ and ‘we.’ I think this prayer speaks to the example that Mary gave us of saying YES to that Holy Disturbance of God —an example that if we say we are followers of her son, we should live out in our daily life. I invite you to pray this with me silently as I read it aloud.

May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our heart.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out our hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

May God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done.

And I add to this prayer, May our lives be touched by a Holy Disturbance so that we, too, can say YES to God as our sister Mary did so long ago.
Amen.