A MOST IMPORTANT EVENT

 A SERMON FOR THE MOTHERHOOD OF THE BVM

What’s the most important thing that’s happened since the last time you were here?  If we spend a little time, we may come up with a few events that either happened to us personally, or maybe in the world at large.  Important political changes perhaps that will end up having far-reaching effects for many years.  I could ask you what was the most important so far this century, and you’d probably say that it was 9/11.  But what if I asked you to narrow it down to the four most important events EVER?  Maybe if this were a classroom it would be interesting to have you write down your answers and compare them, but we’ll have to make do with just giving you my opinion on what are those four events which stand out more than any other because of their effect on the history of mankind.

 

The first must surely be the Creation.  Everything stems from that moment when God said “Let there be light”, and the darkness that was upon the face of the deep was illuminated by the brightness of God’s goodness and love.  Knowing full well that his greatest creation—Man—would fail him, God nevertheless created time and space for him, so that man could choose to know, love and serve God in this world and be happy with him forever in the next.  In that first moment—and we may not have realized it—the Blessed Mother already was.  She was present in the divine knowledge that she would one day be the Mother of God, and eventually our mother too.  Today’s first reading, taken from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiasticus, points this out: “I therefore, being eternal, am given to all my children which are named of him.”

 

The second event happened just a short while later in that little part of the universe where man lived, the Garden of Eden.  The betrayal of God’s love by Adam and Eve when they disobeyed him was again the cause of all that followed—the closing of heaven’s gates and expulsion of man from paradise, our own fallen nature, and ultimately the restoration of grace through the sacrifice of God’s only-begotten Son our Redeemer.  At this event God made manifest the future role of our Blessed Mother, promising Eve that her seed should crush the head of the serpent with her heel.  Redemption would be ours, but it would depend on a woman, just as our fall had been the result of a woman’s disobedience.

 

The third event, which has particular relevance to us on this feastday of Our Lady’s Motherhood, was that moment when the Blessed Virgin Mary accepted her role in the Redemption story, and said those words:  “Let it be done unto me according to thy word.”  With this, Our Lady submitted herself completely to the will of God in all things, repeating in a sense the word of God “Let there be light.”  For at that moment the Son of God became incarnate, was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us.  Without this acquiescence by our blessed Lady, there would not be today the light of salvation in this world, and the gates of heaven would still remain closed in our face.  A momentous event indeed, and the reason we commemorate it three times a day by reciting the Angelus.

 

The fourth event was the death of Christ on the Cross.  This ultimate and most perfect sacrifice, infinite in its merits, was the only offering truly acceptable to an infinite God, infinitely offended by man.  Only a God-Man could expiate those offences and take away the sins of the world, thus re-opening the gates of heaven.  A few days ago, interestingly enough, we commemorated the feast of St. Denis.  He was a pagan who lived at the same time as our Lord but in a land far away.  He lived in Athens, Greece.  But despite the distance, on the very day Christ died on that Cross in Jerusalem, there was a most unusual and unnatural solar eclipse visible in the sky above Athens.  St. Denis was awestruck by this sight, and is said to have remarked:  “Either the God of Nature is suffering or else the mechanism of the universe is breaking up.”  Not since the Creation of the universe had Nature given such a sign to mankind.  But this was the moment when the sins of mankind were forgiven, when the gates of heaven were opened again to all those who, like Our Blessed Mother at the Annunciation, would accept to follow the will of God. 

 

And where was this Blessed Mother to be found at this fourth wondrous event?  At the foot of the Cross, weeping and sorrowful, and yet the only real source of consolation for her dying Son.  What was there left for her to do now that her role as Christ’s Mother was coming to an end?  God had something else in store for her, and from the Cross itself he announced that future role to her and to his beloved apostle John, “Woman behold thy son… son, behold thy Mother.”

 

On this feast of Our Lady’s Motherhood, how can we not recognize these two most extraordinary and awe-inspiring facts.  Firstly, that when Our Lady accepted to be the Mother of God, that same God, Creator of the universe, dwelt within her… 

 

“The God whom earth and sea and sky

Adore and laud and magnify,

Whose might they own, whose praise they swell,

In Mary's womb vouchsafed to dwell.” 

 

And secondly, that even now, this extraordinary Woman, a creature unlike any other, still deigns to be our own Mother.  Her role stretches from the depths of eternity to the heights of eternity.  Always a mother.  Mother of God, and our own Mother.  God saw something in her which we can only marvel at.  He saw her fit to suffer with him at the Cross all the sins of the world, and from that very Cross, he gave to her the task of being Mother to all poor sinners, watching over them from heaven as we commit those very sins that caused her Son’s sufferings and her own.  She continues to look down on us as we sin against her and her Son, and she shares still in his work of Redemption as she continues to protect us, her children, and guides us continually back to his loving and forgiving arms, whenever we pray those glorious words, “Hail Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.”