As preached by Sister Cecelia
Holy Wisdom Chapel
The first tabernacle mentioned in the Epistle this morning
was a symbol of the divinity always with us. In Exodus, God said to Moses: “Make
me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst.” Today’s feast commemorates the
symbol of Mary, the Mother of God—the sanctuary of Emmanuel in our midst.
What does it mean that Jesus—God—is in our midst? When
Joseph heard that the Child had been conceived by the work of the Holy Spirit,
what might that have meant to Joseph? The Jewish idea was that the Holy Spirit
brought God’s truth to humanity. It was the Holy Spirit who told the
prophets what to say and holy ones what to do. The name “Jesus” is the Greek
form of “Joshua,” the savior of his people. Jesus came to save us by telling us
the truth about God and the truth about ourselves. Jesus assured his disciples
that those who had seen Him had seen the Father. The truth about the Father is
that God is love, compassion, and mercy.
Mary’s role is to bring us in worship into contact with
Divinity. Her arms raised in prayer are a symbol that she is praying for and
with the whole church—which is all of us. As members of the body of Christ we
are no longer strangers and sojourners; we are fellow citizens with the holy
ones and are members of God’s household. It is essential that we understand and
embody what that means.
We sometimes believe that we are not worthy and do not
matter. Yet, the apostles, as flawed as they might have been, were the first
living stones of the church. We follow in their footsteps. We are necessary for
the being that is the church, the body of Christ. While Christ is the capstone,
God is the Great Builder, who calls us to be part of what makes the Body sacred
and whole.
If we examine the life of a human being as it appears
externally, we find in that life—as in all things—a common trait of being bound
up with and limited by time. Every earthly thing lives for only a moment,
joining one tiny interval to the next, just as one breath follows the other
that life may continue. Everything we do, whether in the inner life or the
external work of the body, takes place in time. We are born, and we die.
Everything that has a beginning must come to an end in time. Both the wine of
joy and the bitter wave of suffering end in death.
Still, there is something in these things that does not pass
away. In the indifference of all coming and going, there mysteriously lives
something full of meaning, something eternal. Each moment of time, and each
human deed, leaves what is eternal in it—the good or the evil. Is it not both a
comforting and a frightful mystery—that our deeds sink into nothingness, but
before they do, they give birth to something eternal that does not disappear?
The fluctuation of time ceases and sets free the ground of the soul that until
now was seen by God alone. This means that an individual travels the path of
their life through time into an eternity that is no longer time.
Mary traveled this path, as well as we. With her as with all
of us on this earth, life was a restless coming to be and passing away. Her
life began quietly and then ended. In between those two points, her life was
filled with the changes that constitute life. It was filled with the cares
common to all. Hers was filled with hours of utmost joy in God her Savior,
joined with many routine, ordinary hours and of heart-breaking grief. Such a
life did not come to an end. Her whole life entered eternity. Every joy and
every pain, the great and the small, lives on in the eternal goodness of the
one passing into eternity.
Mary’s role is to remind us that God is the Great Builder
who calls us to be part of what makes the Body sacred and whole while we live
in time. It is essential that we understand and embody what that means.
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