Fidelity in motion

This morning, as I reflected on today's feast of the Visitation, it occurred to me that whenever Mary appears in the Gospels she seems to be going somewhere. There is an exception: she is still, in one place - probably the only place she had known all her life - at the Annunciation, when she gives her world-changing, life-changing YES to God. And it is as if this YES becomes the call; the impetus which sends her out... to her cousin Elizabeth... and then to Bethlehem... to Egypt... back to Nazareth... to Jerusalem... Years later, she travels to Cana... goes to meet Jesus during his public ministry... journeys with him to Calvary... accompanies the disciples after the Resurrection. 

That YES, uttered in her youth, impelled her - physically as well as spiritually - to go beyond anything she might ever have imagined for herself, beginning with her extraordinary journey to Elizabeth. And then came Pentecost, filling Jesus' disciples with the strength, courage and gifts for proclaiming the Good News of Jesus; and we can believe that this same Spirit gently led Mary back to stillness, and to a quiet life, lived in prayer and obscurity. 

And thus, to paraphrase TS Eliot, Mary arrived back where she had started, knowing the place for the first time, even as she had known it since forever.

And as I was still turning these thoughts over, this extract from The Fire in These Ashes, by Joan Chittester, appeared in my Facebook feed:

It is a shocking concept, this notion that fidelity does not lie in standing in place but in consistently moving toward whatever brings us to more and more wholeness of heart, certainty of soul, clarity of mind and integrity of behaviour until we finally know deep in our deepest selves what stars really guide us. Fidelity is the ability to move freely through life because of the unwavering ideals that call us on from wherever we are to where we must be if we are ever to achieve and maintain those ideals at all.

Fidelity in motion... Yes, that was Mary, journeying freely and unwaveringly through life, following the One who called her from who and where she was, to who and where she must be, in lifelong, deepening fidelity to the YES she'd uttered as a young girl. May her prayers sustain and accompany us, as we too seek to faithfully follow God's calls towards whatever brings us more and more wholeness of heart, certainty of soul, clarity of mind and integrity in all things.