Welcome to the month of December. With our yearly reentry into this month, we have reached the season of Advent and the chill of winter taunts us as it quickly approaches. We find that the advent candles of hope and peace have already been lit and we move closer and closer to Christmas Day. It can be a season full of joy and wonder, peace and love, giving thanks and understanding, and charity and selflessness. However, for many in this fast-paced world, all of these sentiments of the season are often overlooked, pushed to the side, or simply forgotten. It becomes just another thing to get through instead of a season of possibility.
As I looked at the following reflection given by Maryknoll Affiliate and former Maryknoll Lay Missioner, Kitty Madden on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), her words of “living through love” provide such a beautiful way to approach not only this particular day but this entire season and beyond.
Portrait of Maryknoll Affiliate and former Maryknoll Lay Missioner Kitty Madden
“I invite you today to come and join in spirit with the people of Nicaragua, in Central America, a people with whom I have been blessed to live and work these past twenty-five years. They have indeed taught me much about living through love in God’s presence.
Here, each year on the eve of the feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, or in Nicaragua La Purísima (the Pure One), people fill the streets of every town and city as they boisterously sing songs in honor of Mary and visit homes where shrines have been lovingly arranged for the novena of days leading up to the feast. Listen to their hymns and to the fire crackers in the background. Note the amazing fireworks that light up the December sky. All this celebration is in honor of the young teenager of Nazareth whose story is told in today’s Gospel.
At each Nicaraguan home awaits a family to give out specially made sweets or fruit or a small bowl or handmade gift. The families have made a promise to Mary to do this in return for the answer of some prayer request: health for a loved one who was ill; the return of a son or daughter from the war; a happy death for a parent… It is a bit like the theme of the movie Pay It Forward, in which a young boy named Trevor teaches the practice of passing something on to another each time one receives a gift. At each home shrine, people pause their singing to shout out, ‘¿Qué causa tanta alegría?’ ‘What causes so much joy?’ And all who hear shout back in one voice, ‘La Concepción de María,’ ‘the Conception of Mary.’ […]
In today’s Gospel, Luke tells us of the visit of the angel, always a symbol that something momentous is about to happen. Mary, faithful Jewish woman, is well aware of the Israelite’s understanding that they had been chosen to live in accordance with God’s covenant. Yes, Mary, too, with all her people was chosen from all eternity to live in love in God’s presence. And in response to the angel’s greeting, ‘Rejoice, you who have been graced,’
after some initial bewilderment, Mary gives in to what was simply beyond her understanding. ‘I am servant of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me.’ […]
Will we always understand God’s call to us? I think not. But like Mary, we must listen to the longing in our heart. We must listen to what our life tells us it intends to do with us. It is not possible to keep God’s grace from coming. But what is possible is to miss it, to not look as it brushes past us in our neighborhood or workplace, in the nightly news telling of ways our sisters and brothers in other states or countries have been affected by an earthquake, torrential rains, a mudslide, the collapse of a mine, or the eruption of a volcano. God says to us: Be silent, listen, wait, wonder; something is on the horizon, the likes of which you have never seen. The God-Jesus, who took flesh in Mary, reminds us that to those with eyes and hearts to see, the holy is in our midst, in our lives, and in our selves.
I invite you today to connect with our sisters and brothers in Nicaragua. As you think of their faith-filled processions through the streets, may you know that, with them and with Mary in her Immaculate Conception, you too have been chosen. You have been chosen to live through love in God’s presence. And just imagine the many ways in which this coming week you might pay forward to others this wonderful gift of having been chosen.”
– A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year A, p. 15-18
