Why we call her blessed

This weekend was marred by the ugliness of white supremacists - those who converged on Charlottesville, and those, in the US and around the world, who cheered them on. The fact that so many of them claim to be Christian was challenged by James Martin SJ, who succinctly reminded us all that the message and example of Jesus - the way Jesus calls us to live - is not about supremacy, boundaries and exclusion, but about service, vulnerability and open-hearted, unbounded welcome and acceptance.

Jesus' Mother Mary was most closely united to his Heart, and to his aims and desires: and today, the Assumption, she reminds us that her life too was not about supremacy, nor about glory and queenship and whatever else has been conferred on her, but about being, as Paul O'Reilly SJ writes in this short reflection, an ordinary young woman who did the most extraordinary thing and the most everyday thing of making Jesus real in the world. 

And certainly, that ordinariness is at the heart of Mary, and of her Magnificat - her sheer delight and awed wonder at the God who looks upon her in her lowliness and works marvels in her. This, she proclaims, is why all generations will call her blessed: not because of any miracles or power or glory of her own, but because she allowed the power and the glory of God to permeate and shine and work in and through her.

And this is what each of us was created for; this is what will be our fulfillment, our delight and our everlasting blessing.

May we all, in the words of Paul O'Reilly's reflection, be people who, with a little prayer, a lot of generosity and truly stupendous human goodness, make the Presence of God truly present in this world...