Mary committed her life (St. John Paul II / Jo Ann Melina López)

Among creatures,
no one knows Christ better than Mary;
no one can introduce us to
a profound knowledge of his mystery
better than his Mother.

 --St. John Paul II

    Let us remember where God desires to reveal God’s self, and ask how we can individually, as communities, and as a Church, be committed to the places where God wants to shine God’s face through us. 

    Mary, whom we celebrate today as Mother of God, offers us a way of proceeding. Mary risked greatly in her willingness to encounter the Face of God. To believe in the angel’s promise was to risk her reputation, and her future, on the invitation to share in God’s mission of love. Mary committed her life to deeply encountering God in her child, and she shared this encounter with others. She spent much of her life intimately studying the Face of God in Jesus, and came to know the many ways Jesus revealed God’s face as gracious, kind, and offering peace.

    As Christians, we are invited to cultivate the same intimacy with Jesus as Mary had. May we, like Mary, be willing to risk encountering God’s Face, may we reflect deeply in our hearts on the ways God has been revealed to us, and may we be willing to make a concrete commitment to how our encounter with the Face of God will impact our lives. 

--Jo Ann Melina López

Today is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God...

Image source: The Mother of God with the Infant, icon given by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to Pope Leo XIV, painted on a fragment of an artillery box brought from the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ukrainian-president-zelenskyy-gifts-religious-icon-to-pope-leo-1234743210/
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