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Contemplation Can Be for Moms - Mary was the First!
"The shepherds hurried away to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. When they saw the child, they repeated what they had been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished... As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart...
Luke 2:16-18
posted by Holly at 9:06 PM
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This passage struck me tonight in two ways. First, they found 'Mary and Joseph and the baby'... Hhmm , a family. The most holy woman in the world is a mother of a family. I had often felt early on in my mothering career that somehow being a mother wasn't 'holy enough', too natural and earthy, slightly lesser and unimportant. Silly me, of course.
Jesus himself gives us Mary - Mother of God. Model for religious in her virginity. Model for mothers in her mothering. Model for all of us in her relationship with God and all that each one of us, irrespective of our state of life, are called to become like.
The second thing was that Mary 'pondered all this in her heart'. Contemplation is a prayer of the heart, not the mind. The mind is for an earlier stage in the spiritual life, but all are called to get to our heart level, and this is where we meet God.
So too Mary. That she 'pondered in her heart', and not her mind, reveals that she lived a contemplative life in the home, in the midst of her family and homemaking duties. Once again, she is a model for us mothers that God calls us too to contemplation.
The greatest virtue that I believed Mary had was her total docility and openess to the will of God: 'Behold the Handmaid - Be it done unto me according to Thy Word.'
Can we, as mothers, not say this to God too, about anything and everything in our lives? "Yes God, I am your humble servant, and I do all for you, because you ask it of me, out of love for you." This is the imitation of Mary, and the perfect way to dispose ourselves to God's deepest work in our hearts.
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