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Waiting in a Silent Prayer

Waiting in a Silent Prayer

Last updated on: March 9, 2017 at 4:18 pm by Scott Eric Alt

Waiting in a Silent Prayer 2017-03-09T16:18:36-04:00 Scott Eric Alt

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Sassoferrato, “The Virgin in Prayer,” 1640s

Let it be to me according to your word.” That is not just an incredible act of complete humility and obedience, but it is an act of almost unimaginable surrender. If Mary was found with child out of marriage, by the law of Israel she could be stoned. And she could have said no, and avoided all that. Instead she said “Fiat,” being under no misunderstanding about what that word could have meant to her, yet trusting fully in the God who sent His archangel. But how would you feel to know that you had conceived in your womb the Creator of all things, and that in nine months you would give birth to God? Even if you were immaculately conceived, would you feel worthy? What would you do?

Here is what Mary did: Moved not by self-pride, or self-pity, but love and charity, she went to visit her cousin Elisabeth. Trusting that God would make all things known to him, she told Joseph. (And Joseph, like Mary, did all that God asked of him.) She left the rest to God, and pondered all things in her heart. In the words of the song, she “waited in a silent prayer.”

THE LOAD I BEAR

But I wail and protest at lesser loads, as if I of all men am most beset. God has not done to me as He ought, and all of this and that is askew and can’t get righted. I can not wait in a silent prayer, for I am running around in a vocal plaint.

I have no money.

Where do I come up with the gas to drive to work?

Now I have been laid off.

I have the emptiest refrigerator in Western civilization, or what is left of it after five years of Lord Caesar Obama.

No one is hiring me.

Well, someone just hired me, and I took it, because I had to, but it pays less money and it is in the next state and I’ll need to pay all this extra money in gas, and gas prices are unmentionably high in the reign of emperor Barackus Obamus Caesar.

How on earth can any blogger function with a computer this insanely slow? Attempt to upload one photo and it takes an hour.

My back hurts.

Another night of hot dogs and beans again.

When do I stop being tired all the time?

If I meet the guy who said that poor people are happier, I think I will sock him in the jaw.

I think I would probably be complaining if I had a million dollars in the bank, just that I would be complaining about different things.

Mea maxima culpa.

What Mary did is the hardest and most impossible of all things; and that is why we need Mary. She had no less fear, and possibly more, but she gave it all, with her will, to the God who made her. Mary does not teach us easy things, but she teaches us necessary things. And what is most necessary is her one word: Fiat.

Mary did not ask that Gabriel explain the ways of God. She simply said, “Let it be done to me.” I don’t suspect that her load was less because she was carrying God inside her. I believe that she carried the heaviest load of all, and she carried it from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and then to Egypt and back, and all the way to the cross, and after the cross.

Help me, Lord; I do not know how to do that.

POUR OVER ME YOUR HOLINESS

Henry Ossawa Tanner’s portrait of the Annunciation is the most startling and true. I have seen no other that dares to portray Gabriel not as a man with angelic wings, but as a vertical pillar of fire and light. Mary, who looks at it, her head tilted, her eyes staring at the opposite upward angle, might be full of fear, or wonder, or intense understanding; or it may be that she is fully rapt by the Holy Spirit, and that you could interpret her expression as a nuptial gaze. The intense beauty of light and shadow enveloped upon stillness and innocence is remarkable.

Tanner’s depiction of the Annunciation turns that event into an encounter similar to Moses at the burning bush, the Israelis in the desert, the apostles at Pentecost, and St. Paul on the Damascus road. When God comes to us, he comes to us as light, and much light, and light that drives us to silence and kneeling and sometimes—as in the case of St. Paul—blindness for a time. If we cannot say “Fiat” to light, we are left not only in darkness, but we are left uncreated. For God’s very first words, creating the heavens and the earth, were “Fiat lux” (Gen. 1:3). Thus in the Annunciation, Mary is confronted with lux and says “Fiat.” Mary does not reverse the creation, but through her fiat, God restores the creation; He restores lux.

A better question than how we bear the darkness is how we bear the light.

I OFFER ALL I AM

So Advent is about waiting, it is about surrender, and the silence of trust. It is also about repentance from sin and self-offering to God. It is about learning the weight of a fiat.

It is about knowing the presence of God and the rightness of His plan even as all our own plans slant and tumble and fall amiss.

God comes to us. He comes to us not because our lives are full of peace and there is money in the bank and gas in the car and food in the cupboard and clothes for all the kids. He comes to us because we have strife, because we are broke, because we have nowhere to walk and little to eat and wear socks with holes and shirts with frays. He comes to us when we are crying and broken, and if we don’t see Him it is because we are hiding our face when we should look at light and say joy. He comes to us because He is God.

He has come to us for two thousand Christmases, and He comes again on this one. If we are not afraid to look at light, if we are silent with prayer, if we say our own humble fiats to Him, if we surrender and offer ourselves, He will come and fill the waiting manger and the waiting empty space that yearns for Him alone.

After all, He has come before. Nothing stops Him now.

Help me Lord; I do not know how to do that.

But I will offer you all that I am, and all that you have given me, and walk the road with Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and wait at the manger for the arrival of a King, and light, and mercy, which is all I need and more than all.

Help me be strong; help me be; help me.

***

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