December Saints and Seasons

                      
        Saints and Seasons 

Salvation never comes the way we think it will. We have real problems - financial and marital worries, health concerns,  personal conflicts, corrupt and stupid politicians, people with devastating addiction, disease and disaster - and for the most part we’re sure we know what should be done about them. But our ways are seldom God’s ways. 

“Mary did you know?”, the song asks with its haunting oboe melody.  Mary, did you know? What were your expectations? Would you have been ever guessed that the Savior of the world would come from your womb, helpless and crying, that “the one who you delivered would soon deliver you?”  

“Behold, I am about to do a new thing,” says God, and we think that is good. And it is. But it may not fit in with our ideas and plans. It may take us to entirely new places and demand that we give up our own will time and time again. How many times were Mary’s assumptions about how things “should be” dashed between the Annunciation and when she held her Son’s dead body in her arms? When she stood marveling first at His Birth and later at His resurrection, at the coming of the Holy Spirit? We sometimes for get that she was there for it all.

The Angel Gabriel announced that Mary would bear the Son of God and then disappeared  - “departed” the Bible says, but it’s the same thing for Mary.  We are told later that she “pondered all these things in her heart,” but I suspect the pondering begun way back then.  How can this be? How will I know? How can I do this?  Mothering is never an easy job and it certainly was not for this young Jewish woman who was snatched from obscurity and chosen to be the mother of Jesus, the Christ.  

What Mary did first after agreeing to this audacious task was to go see her cousin. Elizabeth, who had long suffered the shame of barrenness, was 6 months pregnant with John the Baptist when Mary arrived.  We are told that John the Baptist leaped in Elizabeth’s womb when he heard Mary’s voice. Had they been close before or did this double chooseness bond them together as they had not been before?  Did they talk long into the night or was their nearness to each other enough to give them strength and assurance, comfort and courage? 

At the end of 3 months, Mary returned home and they each resumed their separate ways.  Did they meet again? Did she come to comfort Elizabeth at the death of her son? Did she, through the years, think back to their time together with wonder and gratitude? Perhaps one day we can ask them. 

When this old world drew on toward night,

you came, but not in spender bright; 

not a as monarch, but the child 

of Mary, blameless mother mild. 

Hymn # 60 v.3

@ Saints and Seasons is a monthly (except for August) column written by Louise Buck for "The Gospel at Saint David's," the monthly magazine of St David's Episcopal Church, 5050 Milton St, San Diego CA.