Entrustment to Mary = Hugs from God

Today I participated in my new parish’s women’s retreat. I had earlier decided to go as a means to meet new people, and to feel connected with this new community.  I was also in need of some quiet time for prayer.  Upon arrival, I was greeted with a gift bag and ushered to a gourmet breakfast.  This mother-of-five was feeling rather pampered after only five minutes!  But I was treated to much, much more as the day progressed.

The theme was “Strength for the Journey” and the program began with heartfelt, deep prayer.  Musicians shared songs inspired by the Holy Spirit, written especially for this retreat.  I was pleasantly surprised that the celebration of the Holy Eucharist had been included in the schedule!  I was given the chance for meditation and personally reflected on my own temptations to be my own strength, rather than relying on God as my Everything.  Living the spirituality of communion of life with Christ through His Blessed Mother, I was touched by women sharing about the significance of Mary being their mother, too.  It was as if God was reassuring me that this was my new home.  I had been comparing this parish to my previous one mercilessly, and now I was finally open to recognizing God’s presence and will that I be at peace here.

But most of all, I was touched deeply by the vulnerability of the guest speakers.  They shared their stories in such detail and openness that I was humbled to my core.  I have not experienced such grief (not even close), and I was absolutely amazed at the strength of God’s grace.  I was reminded of how close God is to me, to each of us.  I was overwhelmed with the awareness of how God loves us each uniquely and with such attention to small details.  I was amazed that, despite the deep pain, the faith of these women was strengthened.  In their weakness, they discovered God’s strength.  They were in need of His grace, His love, His mercy - and He delivers again, and again, and again.  And I sensed their gratitude. 

Being Control Freak, one of my mixed reactions was fear – fear of a similar situation happening in my life.  I know that my faith is not strong.  I want to say, “Lord, let it be done to me according to Thy word,” but I am too weak!  So as I reflect on this more, I turn to the arms of my Mama, and ask her to carry me.  As I prayed I was directed to the following:

….”Because of gratitude, you can begin to perceive the entire world surrounding you as God’s arms embracing you.  Maybe in the light of faith you will see a discreet inscription on the things around you:  “A gift from the Lord God” or “A gift from the Loving Presence.”  …The deeper your gratitude becomes, the more you can begin to hear…how the world around you speaks of Love.  After all, all of God’s gifts that surround you whisper, repeat, and call out:

I love you as you are.  Therefore, I am with you.  I take care of you.  I give you everything that you need every day.  If you need the bitter pill of suffering, then I give it to you, but only because I know that it is the most priceless gift that you may receive at this moment.  When you need a sweet candy you receive it, because without it, My dearest, you cannot manage on your own.

                                    S.C. Biela, The Two Pillars (Ft Collins, CO: IAMF, 2006), 73-74

So in our Blessed Mother’s arms, I am at peace and I am grateful.  I received a lot of sweet candies today…the biggest being the awareness of how intimately God loves you and me.

Why I'm Entrusted to Mary, Mother of God - Reason 3: Bad Eyesight

I come from a line with bad eyesight. I’ve needed corrective lenses since I was in grade school and all of my children have followed suit.  I just removed my glasses from my face and the computer screen, only two feet away, turned into a fuzzy blur of colors. To put it into perspective, I zoomed my page to 500% and, while I could then make out where a word starts and stops at that zoom, each letter was still blurry and individual letters were not sharp enough to know for sure which letter it was.

Needless to say, I am extremely grateful for my glasses! Without them, I would live in a world of grayness, I would have constant headaches, and I would miss most of the details of the third dimension!  

Not only do I have poor visual eyesight, but I am practically blind when it comes to my eyes of faith. This is exactly why I am completely and utterly grateful for my entrustment to Blessed Mother! Before my entrustment, I spent my days living as if God didn’t even exist.  All I could “see” was how I or my dear ones felt, and how I or my dear ones were affected by our immediate environment. I then reacted to those events as if I could control them; change them to make us all feel good again. This led to living in a gray world (full of anxiety), suffering constant headaches (following my daily bout with tears), and missing most of the details of the spiritual dimension.

I guess it was no wonder the Good Lord had to pound so heavily on the door of my heart. He pounded with events that just couldn’t be fixed with my will, nor understood with my poor mind. Because of my blindness, I “tripped” over the attempted suicide of one of my close friends, then I “pounded into the wall” of my father-in-law’s sudden death…but it wasn’t until I “fell flat on my face” with my third miscarriage that I went to the Divine Physician to admit my blindness! 

How in need I was for so long, yet trying to deal with it all by myself. I looked like I was a religious person on the outside – attending Church, reading spiritual books – but I was so unaware of God’s Presence in my every day, ordinary and extraordinary events. Thanks to Blessed Mother, my eyes are being opened to His Presence more and more each day. Now, when I stub my toe on a stool I can’t see in the middle of the night because my eye glasses are off, I immediately “reach” for my spiritual glasses and say “Oh, MOM! Be my gratitude for this humiliation!” Together, WE (Blessed Mom and I) say, “All is grace.”[1]

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[1] “If we look at the world through the eyes of faith, we will notice that our Creator is present in everything, and that this is the presence of Love – our only authentic reliance.” S.C. Biela, GodAlone Suffices, 3rd. ed. (Ft. Collins, CO: IAMF, 2011), 115.

Why I’m Entrusted to Mary, Mother of God - Reason 2

Because, on my own, I won't run for last! 

An expression used by those trying to live the spirituality of communion of life with Christ through Mary is “I’m running for the last place.”[1] There was an image drawn to depict the saying which shows this very happy runner going downhill passing three very serious, tired uphill runners. 

I'm running for the last place!

When I first tried to intellectualize this expression I really struggled. I couldn’t figure out what it meant – running for last place…is that even possible? And what seemed the most impossible for me was that I would do it smiling.  Discovering my misery before my entrustment equated to self-focused crying, not smiling.  

Blessed Mother is carrying me there.

That’s where Mary, my Beloved Mommy, has helped me so much! Because She is carrying me, I don’t have to rely on myself to pick the right direction – up, down, left, right…is that good, bad,  right or wrong?  She instead tries to keep me focused on the truth that God loves me as I am--the loser and the bungler, or as my ego really rejects – the LAST!

Realizing I’m the last, and rejoicing in this truth is the goal (cf. 2 Cor 9:12). The events in my life are helping me achieve this goal. Before entrustment if I saw my misery, I either hated myself for it or I saved my pride by blaming others, or the circumstances, for my ill behavior. Since entrustment, when I see my misery, WE (Mary and I) desire to remember that this is who God loves: a sinner in need of His mercy.[2]

For example, a couple of days ago I was reading to the Little One the story of St. Thérèse the Little Flower. In it there was a passage about how St. Thérèse, when she was a toddler, threw temper tantrums. It mentioned that her mother was loving and patient with her and helped her to desire to please Jesus.[3] I immediately started dreaming of how I could teach my child this way too. No sooner had these dreams come to my mind, the Little One locked herself into my bedroom where she was going to take a nap. I reacted by screaming like a lunatic for her to unlock the door. My outrageous screaming (or should I say temper tantrum?) didn’t put the proper fear of God into her, but the fear of her mother’s wrath! So, of course, she didn’t open the door. I was totally insulted – proving how much I want to be first. "Loving and patient," I was not.  Blessed Mother allowed me to experience who I am.[4] In a very gentle way, She wanted to show me that I need her to teach me to desire to please Jesus!

Who am I? I am Blessed Mother’s beloved bungler. What did this event help me to understand? That I need a Savior. It made me desire that Christ would live in me. And for that WE are truly grateful!

S.C. Biela helped me to understand this in his book God Alone Suffices:

This process of purification is described in the words of Jesus: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me!” (Mk 8:34). Indeed, we have to deny ourselves in order to undergo the process of purification from our pride of good impressions about ourselves. This indicates the need to take up the cross of truth about ourselves, and imitate Jesus so that we will desire to be the last–to run for the last place here on earth.³²

We cannot forget that Jesus, though being first, became the last. In this way, he has shown us how we should relate toward everything. In this way, he has shown us what the spirit of this world offers us, and he has revealed to us our attachments to our own ‘perfection’. He took upon himself our wretchedness and the sinfulness of our attachments. He waits, however, for us to come after him so as to fully take advantage of the sacrifice that he offered for us. He expects that in order to imitate him we will try to lose everything and everybody, which includes the prideful notions that we are good.

This race for the last place on earth is meant to shape us into persons who will consciously and voluntarily assume and admit, in the posture of the poor in spirit, that we are nothing and that we await everything from God. It is only such a person who will try to desire this one thing: that he will not live, but that Christ will live in him. In this way the grain can gradually die.

³² Charles de Foucauld, in his notes from the retreat in Nazareth (November 5-15, 1897), says: “For me, to seek always the last of the last places.” This confession is as an echo of a sentence which he had heard soon after his conversion during a sermon given by his spiritual director, Father Huvelin: “Jesus has so taken the last place that no one has ever been able to wrest it from him.” Father Huvelin, Sermons, March 1887 quoted by Jean-Jacques Autier, Charles de Foucauld, trans. Julia Shirek Smith (San Francisco, CA Ignatius Press, 1999), 152, 105.

S.C. Biela, God Alone Suffices, 3rd. ed. (Ft. Collins, CO: IAMF, 2011), 108.  Used with permission.

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[1] Rev. Andrzej Buczel, Ph.D, (1951-1994) co-founder of the Families of Nazareth Movement.

[2] “Why do we not truly lay our life before Him, including our incapability to believe and to pray? This is already an act of worship: when we truly say “Kyrie eleison,” when we truly cry out to God from the depth of our wretchedness, this is acknowledgement of what we are, and who He is; it is the adoration for His glory.” Translated from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dogma und Verkündigung (Dogma and Preaching), p. 123 f.

[3] Cf. Marie Baudouin-Croix, St. Thérèse of Lisieux And the “little way” of love (Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media, 1999), 11.

[4] In case you are wondering, I was able to unlock the door within a short time, and no physical harm came to the Little One.