Somebody's Handmaid

“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word.” Luke 1:38

I went to adoration the other day to ponder the Seven Sorrows of Mary and how they are actually healing because a new friend had said I should do this.  I meditated on Mary’s Sorrows for awhile and then I got into my car and drove home.  On the way home I listened to this song called Mary, by Patty Griffin and I bawled my eyes out.

I wasn’t sure what my meditation on all of this would bring, but God knew what He wanted to say to me.  It happens to me in the strangest places, the shower, the car, blow drying my hair, but God will start pouring things over me and I am overwhelmed with how much He loves us and how much Mary understood and still understands this.

This is what He told me, “She is Our Lady of Mercy.”  And then He showed me what He meant.  It was like seeing the life of Mary flash before my eyes.   It was all the ways she could have been offended, but wasn’t.  She was unoffendable because she walked perpetually in Mercy.

When Joseph wanted to divorce her quietly, she didn’t rage at him.  She loved him, and waited for God to act.

When Caesar called a census and she was late in pregnancy and had to travel 70 miles on a donkey, she didn’t rail at the government, she obeyed the edict.

When she was denied room in the Inns in Bethlehem, she did not scream at the Innkeepers.  She accepted her plight.

Even in her Sorrows, she walked in mercy.  Simeon told her a sword would pierce her heart.  In today’s society a Priest cannot even tell a parishioner not to drink coffee in the sanctuary without getting scowled at.

Herod ordered the killing of HER SON.  We don’t see her falling apart.  We see her and Joseph obeying the angel and fleeing to Egypt.

Even with Jesus, when He left her at the age of twelve and didn’t tell her where He was going, we don’t see her berating Him for being a bad Son.

When she meets Jesus on the way to Calvary, she wasn’t hateful and bitter to the guards who were brutally beating him.  She was sorrowful.

At the Crucifixion she isn’t screaming about the Apostles abandoning her Son.  She is with Him standing at the Cross and trusting.

When they placed His body in her arms, she just held Him.

At His burial, she accepted God’s plan.  She didn’t resist that which she could not control.

She walked in Mercy.  We can assume that like Jesus, and all the rest of us Mary was tempted.  But in all things she walked in forgiveness.  Immediate forgiveness.  This is because she was Full of Grace.  She was able to see what God sees in us.  She was able to love despite suffering.

Think of all the people she had to forgive along the way.  Joseph, Caesar, Herod, Simeon, Jesus, Peter and the Apostles who left Him, Pilate, Judas, the leaders of her own religion.  The list goes on.

Mary did not embrace or sit in bitterness, resentment, envy, malice, or any of the things she may have been tempted with because of her circumstances.

There is SO MUCH we can learn from Mary.  It is this total obedience to God, total humility and total walking in mercy that elevated her to the greatest woman known in history.  Her mind, body and soul were totally and completely delivered from evil by her Immaculate Conception and her decision to “forgive trespasses.”  As we all look for inner healing, we should look no further than MERCY.  Because it is in mercy that we walk in the will of God.  Her mind, soul and body were aligned with the will of God, so it makes perfect sense that she was Assumed into heaven because she lived the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven and that makes you incorruptible, and for her inseparable from the way God created us to actually be.   She was somebody’s handmaid.  She was the handmaid of the Lord, conceived without sin and able to do what Eve did not, which shows us how much she loves us too, and it is why she is Our Mother.