Imitate Mary’s response at the Annunciation, Mary: Day 195

Last updated on: February 1, 2016 at 3:30 am by Pete Socks

Imitate Mary’s response at the Annunciation, Mary: Day 195 2016-01-01T13:34:36-05:00 Pete Socks

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Imitate Mary’s response at the Annunciation

Blessed John Henry Newman counsels us to learn this lesson from Mary: Grow in holiness through the everyday challenges of life, so that it won’t be necessary for God to purify us through great adversity.

Observe the lesson which we gain for ourselves from the history of the Blessed Virgin: that the highest graces of the soul may be matured in private, and without those fierce trials to which the many are exposed for their sanctification. The aids which God gives under the gospel covenant have power to renew and purify our hearts, without uncommon providences to discipline us into receiving them. God gives his Holy Spirit to us silently; and the silent duties of every day (it may be humbly hoped) are blest to bring about the sufficient sanctification of thousands, whom the world knows not of. The Blessed Virgin is a reminder of this; and it is consoling as well as instructive to know it.

When we quench the grace of Baptism, then it is that we need severe trials to restore us. This is the case of the multitude, whose best estate is that of chas- tisement, repentance, supplication, and absolution, again and again. But there are those who go on in a calm and unswerving course, learning day by day to love him who has redeemed them, and overcoming the sin of their nature by his heavenly grace, as the various temptations to evil successively present themselves.

Of these undefiled followers of the Lamb, the blessed Mary is the chief.
Strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, she “staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief ” (see Rom 4:20); she believed when Zechariah doubted—with a faith like Abraham’s she believed and was blessed for her belief, and had the fulfillment of those things which were told her by the Lord. —Blessed John Henry Newman, “The Reverence Due to the Virgin Mary”

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
Do I try to grow in holiness quietly, daily, and incrementally, asking God fre- quently for his grace? Or must some great adversity send me to my knees before I will beg God for assistance?

CLOSING PRAYER
Lord, let me be still before you with my mother, Mary; let me pray with the psalmist: “My heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast” (see Ps 131:1–2).

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