| Jesus meets the crowd at a level stretch of ground! St. James Parish (c)Mary TV 2011
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September 7, 2011  Image by peterjr1961 via Flickr Dear Family of Mary! "Dear children; with all my heart and soul full of faith and love in the Heavenly Father, I gave my Son to you and am giving him to you anew. My Son has brought you, the people of the entire world, to know the only true God and his love. He has led you on the way of truth and made you brothers. Therefore, my children, do not wander, do not close your heart before that truth, hope and love. Everything around you is passing and everything is falling apart, only the glory of God remains. Therefore, renounce everything that distances you from the Lord. Adore him alone, because he is the only true God. I am with you and I will remain with you. I am especially praying for the shepherds that they may be worthy representatives of my Son and may lead you with love on the way of truth. Thank you." (September 2, 2011)  Image via Wikipedia The beginning of this message is very beautiful. Our Lady describes the Annunciation in such a lovely way. "With all my heart and soul full of faith and love in the Heavenly Father, I gave my Son to you." Our Lady's heart was so full of love for the Heavenly Father, so full of faith in Him, that she was called "Full of Grace" by the Angel Gabriel. Her heart was so full, so ready to receive grace from the Father, that she could say "yes" to the Father when He asked her to be the Mother of His Son. Her fullness resulted in the coming of the Messiah, our Savior. What awe this inspires in us! What joy! What peace! What hope! What love! We are the happy recipients of her fullness, Jesus, Our Lord! |
She tells us, "My Son has brought you, the people of the entire world, to know the only true God and his love." Jesus is the revelation of the only true God. Jesus is God, the Son, become man. As man, Jesus shows us the Father. "He who has seen me, has seen the Father" (John 14: 9). The love and truth and holiness and power of the Father have been shown to us by Jesus.
I realized this in a new way when I read the Gospel for Tuesday, September 6. Luke writes:
"Jesus departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles...And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground. A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured. Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him because power came forth from him and healed them all" (Luke 6: 12-19).
Two things struck me in this passage. One, that Jesus prayed. Jesus was God! But He prayed to His Father. He went to a secluded place and spent the whole night in prayer with the Father. His connection with the Father was not automatic, as we might have thought. Jesus, as man, needed to pray, to seek the Father. As a man, Jesus was like us, in need of prayer.
The second thing was that when Jesus came back from prayer, with his new Apostles, he found "a stretch of level ground" where he met with the people of the region. He found a level spot, a place where he was on the same level with all the other people. Jesus was a man, like everyone else, but he carried within Him the power of His Godhead, and so he could heal and free the people He was with. They wanted to touch Him, to be healed. Jesus was in amongst them, one of them, on their level, and yet filled with the power of His divinity. In this way Jesus revealed God to the people, because he could heal them, deliver them, and set them free. "My Son has brought you, the people of the entire world, to know the only true God and his love."
Image by More Good Foundation via Flickr
By descending to our level, becoming one of us, Jesus made God available to us through His love, His presence among us, His healing power in our midst. Our Lady was the vehicle for Jesus to become Man. She brought Jesus to us, in that sense. And so she has given Him to us, allowed Jesus to descend to our level, through her "yes" to the Father.
We can rejoice in this knowledge - that Jesus found a level stretch of ground on which to be with us, one of us, in amongst us, and that He wants to stay with us, continually giving us a relationship with His Father. Jesus is with us, on our level, uniting us to His Father through His humanity and His divinity in hypostatic union. Jesus is our bridge to the Father, our way to heaven, our union with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is everything for us! We love you, Jesus, and your dear Mother Mary! In Jesus and Mary!
Cathy Nolan
Mary TV
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