"Behold, I Come To Do Your Will"
Reading 1 Isaiah 7:13-14; 8:10
Then Isaiah said: Listen, O house of David! Is it not enough for you to weary people, must you also weary my God? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel, which means "God is with us!"
Gospel Luke 1:35-38
And the angel said to her in reply, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God." Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.
Piety
Then he says, "Behold, I come to do your will." He takes away the first to establish the second. By this "will," we have been consecrated through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:9-10)
Study
Our Holy Seasons once again overlap. During this second week of Easter, we are reminded that Mary had to become pregnant with Jesus nine months before Christmas in order to give birth. So, the First Joyful Mystery of Advent now connects relationally to the First Glorious Mystery of Easter season. All my life’s a circle, one bead connected to another. Jesus cannot be “born again” in the Resurrection until he is born a first time in a manger in Bethlehem.
Both seasons remind us of one compelling fact of our faith experience: we are here to do God’s will. That was Mary’s attitude at the Annunciation and that was Jesus’ attitude in the Garden. Personal will takes second place to a humble obedience to God’s will.
Action
Today is the Anniversary of the funeral of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the only Eulogy delivered at his funeral, Benjamin Mays, the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta when Dr. King was a student there, said:
God called the grandson of a slave on his father’s side, and the grandson of a man born during the Civil War on his mother’s side, and said to him: Martin Luther, speak to America about war and peace; about social justice and racial discrimination; about its obligation to the poor; and about nonviolence as a way of perfecting social change in a world of brutality and war.
Often, we remember the “I Have a Dream” of Dr. King without remembering the full force of the Gospel which this modern prophet proclaimed. In parallel with the famous speech from the March on Washington, King’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech is just one appropriate bookend. (Another might be his letter from a Birmingham Jail – for Dr. King was as at home at a black-tie dinner with kings and presidents as he was when jailed 30 times or when fighting for a just wage for a garbage collector.)
The words delivered in Oslo in 1964 prophetically remind us that Dr. King was severely criticized for his opposition to the war in Vietnam. It must be said, however, that one could hardly expect a prophet of Dr. King’s commitments to advocate nonviolence at home to be surprised at his consistent opposition to violence in Vietnam. Nonviolence based in the Gospel is a total commitment not only in solving the problems of race in the United States but to solving the problems of the world. In Oslo in 1964, King said this:
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day, mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!
Just as Jesus (at age 33) died for us to yield to God’s will as he did, Martin Luther King died for the cause of equality, non-violence, and peace for all people.
For Catholics, indeed for all Americans, the 50th anniversary of King's assassination and funeral offers a time to re-assess how far the nation has come in its promise of “liberty and justice for all,” and how far we have to go to achieve the universal civil rights for which King labored and died.
Dr. King’s nonviolent movement worked for justice and reconciliation, "not victory." King, for his part, said nonviolence required active resistance to evil rather than passivity. It sought to convert, not to defeat the opponent; it was directed against evil, not against persons, wrote Princeton University emeritus religion historian Albert Raboteau in his book, A Fire in the Bones.
If Christmas is the season when we celebrate God with Us, then Easter is the season when we celebrate that God is STILL with us. We are still an Easter people. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he did not leave us alone. He sent the Holy Spirit to be with us. And sometimes, that spirit might take the human form of modern-day prophets like Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, or Lech Walesa.
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