The striving of a Christian to live fully in reality, to be true and full of love amidst all the darkness, lies, and pride – how can it be done each day? I was struck by the following paragraph, a reflection on the “yes” of Mary, mother of our Lord, who is a perpetual example to us of grace and trust while immersed in sorrow and injustice. If she can say yes each day, by the grace of our Lord, we too can say yes.
“To join in Mary’s Yes at the foot of the cross is to declare oneself ready to undergo the Cross of Christ in whatever form one’s faith and circumstance might require.
To say Yes to that daunting possibility is not to know for certain that one possesses the capacity to carry through with that pledge. For the capacity to do so requires grace over which we have no control.
What we do have is the assurance that where sin – or evil or hardship or persecution – abound, grace superabounds.
That is all we need to know in order to commit with our feeble will to endure the Cross of Christ in whatever form it might take in our own lives and the premier place where the decision to do so is made at the Eucharist table of the Lord.”
The writer goes on to quote Adrienne von Speyer, a woman who had suffered greatly yet trusted Christ deeply:
“We must not fear this and let ourselves take back, in the night of suffering, the joy underlying this being allowed to suffer with Christ.
The joy may have been sent as a deposit; it may have become insensible; it must above all be there, even in the most profound suffering, as grateful joy that we know to be so profoundly anchored in the Lord that it does not disappear even when our whole capacity for feeling is required by the suffering.”
– Gil Bailie, “God’s Gamble: The Gravitational Power of Crucified Love” ‘Abide With Us’, pgs 348-9
