Mary's Yes

I can't tell you how grateful I am to be with all of you. I've told my brother priests on numerous

occasions that this single year that I've spent serving the Chaldean Church has been the happiest

of my priesthood in many ways. And a lot of that has to do with all of you.

You, the Chaldean young people, are earnest, and your desires are good, and you're seeking to

be good and to follow God's will. I've seen it time and time again in the confessions that I hear

and the people who come to me for spiritual direction or for advice. I am really edified by you and

by your goodness.

And the fact that you should take a weekend out of your life simply to spend time with God and

with one another just as a testimony to this goodness that you have. And it brings my heart to life

as a priest when I see this kind of goodness. So I'm very grateful to you, also, for having me be

with you here and to teach you a little bit about the great mysteries of our faith.

One of you yesterday said to me, Father, I've heard you on Qurbanimedia on a couple of

occasions, and I've never met you in person. But I want to thank you for the things that you say,

and I fall asleep to the sound of your voice. I understand.

I hope I'm not going to have the same kind of effect on you this morning. The talk is in the

morning. After all, we've all had our coffee, so we should be OK.

We have a very beautiful theme for this convention, Marry Our Model. And we've been

considering Mary as the model of the Christian life. Father Simon yesterday asked us to invite

her, to invite Mary into those areas of our lives that we don't let anyone else see.

Because Mary knows how to arrange for water to become wine. Mary knows how to arrange for

water to become wine. This morning, I want to look briefly at the most decisive moment in Mary's

life.

It's a moment so critical that we as Christians commemorate it every day, several times a day,

every time we pronounce the Hail Mary. That's the moment that Mary said yes to what God asked

of her. Remember the passage from the Gospel, from the Gospel of Luke.

We read it at Advent repeatedly. The Gospel of Luke tells us that in the sixth month, the angel

Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man

whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came

to her and said, Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.

But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind, what sort of greeting this

might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

And behold, you shall conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him

the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his

kingdom, there will be no end.

And Mary said to the angel, how shall this be, since I do not know man? And the angel said to

her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore, the child to be born of you will be called Holy, the Son of God. And behold, your

kinswoman Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with

her who was called barren.

For with God, nothing will be impossible. And Mary said, behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.

Let it be to me according to your word.

And the angel departed from her. There is so much in this passage. We can meditate on it for the

rest of our lives and still not exhaust what is actually occurring here.

This brief talk today, this morning, is just meant to give you a little bit, a little bit of content to help

you to reflect, to help you to think, and to bring it to bear on your own life. Now, I said a moment

ago that this passage describes the most decisive moment in Mary's life. But Mary, we know, was

no ordinary woman.

Mary is the greatest of God's creatures. She is the highest of the angels, the queen of the saints.

God has uniquely prepared her long before she was born.

God uniquely prepared her for this singular purpose. She was to be the mother of the Messiah, to

share his salvific mission, sharing in his life, his suffering, his death, and his resurrection, in the

highest possible degree given to a human being. And she, who was to be his mother during his

earthly life, would become our mother at the foot of the cross.

Because it was on the cross that Jesus united us, united you and me to himself. He identified

each of us with himself. And if she is his mother, then she is our mother too.

Mary's mission, as the mother of God, and the mother of all the Christian faithful, that mission

required very particular graces from God, because there's a principle in the spiritual life. The

grace God gives us is always proportioned to the mission he gives us. The grace God gives us is

always proportioned to the mission he gives us.

And Mary had the highest possible mission, second only to her son. That's why Mary was full of

grace. Full of grace.

But to see Mary for who she is, and to love her more because we see her for who she is, we

need to take a step back a moment and consider the whole picture of Mary. In the book of

Genesis, you remember shortly after Adam and Eve rebel against God, we hear God ask a rather

disturbing question. The Lord calls out to Adam and he says, where are you? Where are you?

What makes this question disturbing is that God cannot physically lose anything.

He knows the location of every Adam in the universe. Nothing would exist if God wasn't holding it

in being at that very moment. God cannot lose anything, and yet he says to Adam, where are

you? There is a very real sense in which sin makes us lost to God.

Sin makes us lost to God. And because Adam and Eve sinned, God in some sense lost them.

God lost the parents of the human race and all of their children as well.

When Adam and Eve deliberately chose to defy God, which is, let's be honest, exactly what

happens every time we sin. We deliberately choose to defy God. When Adam and Eve defied

God, they lost the gift of grace.

And a soul without grace cannot have friendship with God. And so Adam and Eve hide

themselves. They hide themselves from the God with whom only moments before they shared

love and communion.

And the break in that relationship, the break in their relationship with God, the most basic and

fundamental relationship, the break in that relationship caused all other relationships in Adam's

and Eve's life to deteriorate. It's a domino effect. When the relationship with God fractures, all of

the other relationships in our lives fracture as well.

And we see this happen in Genesis. Notice. In the garden, remember, the couple was naked and

unashamed.

But then after they sinned, they saw their nakedness and then they covered themselves with fig

leaves. Why? Because they no longer looked at each other with innocence and purity. It was in

that moment that they started to objectivize one another.

And they felt the shame of guilt. So they covered themselves. The brokenness in the relationship

with God extended into a brokenness within themselves and with one another.

Remember, when God calls them to account for their actions, what does Adam do? He blames

her. Just a moment ago, she was flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones. Now, this woman

whom you gave me, right? The relationship with her begins to falter as well.

In other words, Adam says she is responsible for my sin. She is responsible, and you, God, are

responsible for my sin because you gave her to me. It's her fault and yours, not mine.

A broken relationship with God results necessarily in a broken relationship with oneself, with

one's loved ones, and even with the natural order. After the sin, even the earth refused to

produce fruit. The earth itself rebels against Adam because he rebelled against God.

So with the loss of God's friendship, human relationships deteriorate. And on a grand scale, men

find themselves inclined to evil. We all do things that we do not want to do in a moment of lust, in

a moment of anger.

Why? Well, because we're broken. We quarrel and we fight with one another. Why? Well,

because we're broken.

Pride, greed, jealousy, complacency, cowardice, they take hold of us. Why? Because we are

broken. And this brokenness is the result of that original sin, which is then, of course,

compounded by the multitude of our own sins and the effects of the sins of others on us, right? All

of which pull us further and further and further away from God.

When we come into the world, we enter it, every one of us, deprived of grace, deprived of God's

friendship. And without God's friendship, heaven remains closed because heaven is for those

who love God. That's the situation.

And it's bleak, it's dire, it's true. But God, in his infinite mercy and love for us, intended to redeem

us even from the moment of Adam and Eve's rebellion. Even from the moment of Adam and

Eve's rebellion, he promises a savior in the book of Genesis.

It's called the Proto-Evangelion, or the first gospel. The first time that God promises a savior is

immediately after Adam and Eve sinned. In Genesis 3.15, what does God say? He's speaking to

Eve and he says, I will put enmity between you.

He's speaking to the serpent, excuse me. He's speaking to the devil. And he says, I will put

enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.

He will strike at your head as you strike at his heel. Who is this woman? Well, it's obviously not

Eve, because she had just given in to the devil. There is no enmity between Eve and the serpent.

There's a friendship between Eve and the serpent, right? Who is this woman? Who is at odds

with the serpent? That woman is Mary. This is one of the reasons why the church has always

believed that Mary was immaculately conceived. There is enmity between the serpent and this

woman.

And enmity means complete opposition. There is nothing, nothing, nothing in her that belongs to

the serpent. There is nothing in her that belongs to the serpent.

She is the highest honor of the human race. Holy, beautiful, tainted and corrupted by nothing.

She was and is full of God's grace.

And therefore, she is most fully what God from the very beginning intended human beings to be.

Mary is what God from the very beginning intended human beings to be. Hail, full of grace,

Gabriel tells her.

That Greek word, tekaretomene, that Greek word, it's not a description, it's a title. She is the full

of grace. She is the full of grace.

And fullness here implies wholeness, totality. Mary is replete with grace. And she succeeds

exactly where Eve failed.

Eve says no, Mary says yes. Eve encounters the serpent and hears the hiss of suspicion. God is

holding out on you.

God is not trustworthy. God doesn't have your best interest in mind. And by obeying the serpent,

she breaks trust with God.

And the human race, her children, falls into fear and shame and exile. But when Mary listens to

the angel, the world begins to heal. Mary trusts God completely.

Not because she sees the whole plan, she doesn't. But because she knows the one who speaks.

And this question that she asks in the middle of the passage, how shall this be? Since I do not

know man.

This question is an indication of her trust. Because she isn't doubting that God can and will do

this. She knows that God can do whatever he wants to do.

She simply doesn't know how it's going to take place. Because she's a consecrated virgin. She

consecrated her virginity as a child.

She doesn't know man. How is it that she is going to bear a child? She's asking a question more

out of wonder than out of doubt. So she acknowledges her limitation.

I don't know how you're gonna do this, Lord. But I know that you're gonna do it. She trusts God

completely, not because she knows the whole plan, but because she knows the one who is

speaking.

Eve's disobedience closes the path to life. Mary's obedience opens it up again. Eve reaches for

what is not hers and loses everything.

Mary receives what is freely offered and brings forth the Savior of the world. One woman's no

ushered in the night, the other woman's yes lets the first light of dawn break over creation. In one

of his Advent homilies, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux imagines the entire universe suspended in

anticipation of Mary's reply.

The angel awaits an answer, he writes. Adam, with his sorrowing family, begs this of you.

Abraham begs it.

David begs it. All the holy patriarchs, your ancestors, they ask this of you. The whole world is

prostrate at your feet waiting.

Answer quickly, O virgin. Reply in haste. Answer with a word.

And receive the word of God. Everything converges on that moment. Everything hangs on the

freedom of a young woman who trusts God more than she does herself.

I am the handmaid of the Lord, she says. Let it be done to me according to your word. I said

earlier that Mary is the greatest of God's creatures, higher than the angels and the saints.

And this is important for us because she models for us what true greatness looks like. And at this

point, I'd like to lean into this point just a bit, just for a moment because, because every one of

you here has a desire for greatness. Don't be afraid of that.

That's not pride or vanity. God has placed the desire for greatness in you. God has placed that

desire for greatness in you.

You want your life to matter. You want your work to mean something. You want to be respected

by others.

You want to live a good and holy and devout life. You want to serve God. You want to be a great

saint.

These are the best possible desires you can have. God has placed that desire for greatness in

you. And the beautiful thing is that you can be because nothing is impossible with God.

You can be truly great. There is nothing wrong with the desire for greatness. You are made for

glory.

And the restlessness that you feel when your life seems small is evidence of that. It's evidence of

the fact that you are made for something more, for so much more. That desire is good.

Where we can tend to make the mistake though is this. Many of us have adopted a notion of

greatness that is utterly mistaken. We tend to think of greatness, or we can tend to think of

greatness in worldly terms.

The higher salary, the title, the degree, the reputation, the making something of ourselves.

There's a lot of pressure on us for all of this. And every culture has its drawbacks.

The pressure for that is particularly high in our community. And it's not fair. It's not fair for you,

having to live up to somebody else's expectations.

That's not what greatness is about. That's not what greatness is about at all. If that's what we

think greatness is, then it's hard not to constantly compare yourselves with each other.

And you end up saying things like, everyone else is moving forward and I'm not. I'm stuck. I'll

never make anything of myself.

I should be married by now. I should be earning more by now. I should know what I want by now.

I should have something to show for all of these years. I hear that from all of you. And you're just

repeating the things that you've been told by others.

Notice that all of these statements contain the word should. Who came up with all these shoulds?

They drive our lives, but often without ever stopping to consider whether they are even true. Mary

stands as a firm challenge to the world's notion of greatness.

She has no achievements that the world would admire. She has no wealth, no learning, no

standing in society. And when the angel greets her, he doesn't say to her, well done.

You've worked really hard. You've made something of yourself. He doesn't say any of that.

He says hail full of grace. He doesn't name what she has accomplished. That doesn't mean

anything.

He names what she has received from God. That means everything. Mary's greatness consists

entirely in her capacity for God.

And that, brothers and sisters, is what greatness actually is. To receive God and to give him to

others. This means that the greatness that God intends for you is not measured by the

achievements that the world notices.

It is measured instead by how open you are to him, it is measured by how willing you are to trust

him and how willing you are to let him work. Mary did not understand the whole plan. She did not

feel ready.

She simply placed herself in God's hands at his disposal and said, behold, I am the handmaid of

the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word. That same freedom is offered to each of

you.

Before you leave this convention, I would just ask you to do three things. Very simple things in a

moment of quiet with the Lord. First, acknowledge the place in your life where you still resist

God's call.

How do I know what that is? Well, it's wherever I have fear, wherever I'm stuck in comparison,

wherever the world's shoulds hold sway in my life. Whatever that is, name it honestly before the

Lord. Don't try to fix it.

Just bring it into the light. Name it honestly before the Lord. Second, ask Jesus, how shall this

be? Honestly, ask him, how is this going to be? How are you going to do this? But make Mary's

words your own, even if you can only whisper them.

I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word. Say these words not

because you understand them or you feel strong, but because you choose to trust the one who

calls you.

Because you choose to trust the one who calls you. Third, choose one concrete act of trust this

week. All right, one step that matches the yes you have just spoken.

This could be a conversation that you have postponed because you're afraid of having it. It could

be a habit that you need to begin or a habit that you need to end. It could be a person that you

need to begin to start forgiving.

It could be sitting in silence with the Lord to talk to him about things that you've been avoiding.

Whatever that is, resolve to do it this week. Resolve to do it while the grace is fresh.

When we act on the grace that God gives us, he gives us more. Greatness in the Christian sense

is not something that you achieve. It's something that you receive and then hand on.

Mary shows us the way. May we follow her today and every day that follows.