Open Hands, Open Heart
Our Father and Founder, John Cardinal O’Connor, loved to meditate on Our Lady- her youth, her love, her “yes”, her suffering, the divine intimacy and privilege she was chosen to receive. One event of which he did not tire plumbing the depths was the moment of the Incarnation, when Mary responded with her “be it done unto me” and Jesus was conceived in her womb by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.
On Monday, we celebrated this event that changed everything, forever- the Solemnity of the Annunciation. One of the Cardinal’s favorite poems vividly ponders what it must have been like for the Blessed Mother the very next morning, after the Angel Gabriel had departed. It is entitled, “I Sing of a Maiden” and was written by a Redemptorist priest, Fr. Duffy.
And was it true,
The stranger standing so,
And saying things that lifted her in two,
And put her back before the world’s beginning?
Her eyes filled slowly with the morning glow.
Her drowsy ear drank in a first sweet dubious bird.
Her cheek against the pillow woke and stirred,
To gales enriched by passage over dew,
And friendly fields and slopes of Galilee
Arose in tremulous intermixture with her dreams
Till she remembered suddenly…
Although the morning beams
Came spilling in the gradual rubric known to every day,
And hills stood black and ruinous, as in eclipse,
Against the softly spreading ray,
Not touched by any strange apocalypse
Like that which yesterday had lifted her sublime,
And put her back before the first gray morn of Time –
Though nothing was disturbed from where she lay and saw,
Now she remembered with a quick and panting awe,
That Someone came, and took in hand her heart,
And broke it irresistibly apart,
With what he said, and how in tall suspense
He lingered, while the white celestial inference,
Pushing her fears apart, went softly home.
Then she had faltered her reply,
And felt the sudden burden of eternal years,
And shamed by the angelic stranger standing by
Had bowed her head to hide her human tears.
Never again would she awake
And find herself the buoyant Galilean lass,
But into her dissolving dreams, would break
A hovering consciousness too terrible to pass –
A new awareness in her body when she stirred,
A sense of Light within her virgin gloom:
She was the Mother of the wandering Word,
Little and terrifying in her laboring womb.
And nothing would again be casual and small,
But everything with light invested, overspilled
With terror and divinity: the dawn, the first bird’s call,
The silhouetted pitcher waiting to be filled.
The one called to religious life has a share in the heart of the Blessed Mother; receiving an invitation that lifts you in two! And suddenly, to find everything filled with terror and divinity, over-spilled with light.
Discerning a religious vocation is not at my initiative or project, not something I consider and weigh, as I would the discernment of where I want to go to college, what I want to study, or which profession I want to choose. It is not based on my temperament, gifts or preferences. It is not something I shoulder as a burden, turn to in guilt, or strive for with ambition.
The discernment of my state in life begins in relationship, with detachment – meaning open hands and an open heart- ready to receive. It takes place in the silence of my heart, where I am alone with the Father in secret, in prayer before the Jesus who knows me and loves me, asking the Spirit to reveal my deepest desires and how I am being led.
The call to religious life begins with a Divine Initiative. The Lord is the one who initiates, who knocks at the door with His invitation, prompting and proposing. He is the One offering Himself to me, and asking me to make a response, in freedom and in love to this gift.
Like Mary, I also pose the wondrous question, “How can this be?” Through receiving Jesus frequently in the Sacraments, spending time in Adoration and reading scripture, finding a spiritual director who can guide me in the ways of prayer, I am reassured as she was, that all things are possible with Him and that I won’t be doing any of this on my own, but by the power of the Holy Spirit and accompanied by others.
As we continue to journey with Jesus this Lent, ask for the grace of openness and receptivity. And ask Our Lady to be in her “yes”.
Be assured of our prayers, in Christ, our Life,
Sr. Bethany, Sr. Faustina, and Sr. Ann
