An elderly lady told me of an incident at the death of her mother. With the family gathered at her bedside, mother uttered her last words: ‘Thy will be done’ and immediately the blind fell of its own accord! Mother spoke her last words and died and all went black in the room as the blind came down.
I remember the tale because those words - thy will be done - are too often uttered as passive resignation to God as fate, as in the dramatic circumstances of that death which spoke of the darkness of the beyond.
Hold that image and I’ll give you another, the grave of the priest who helped bring me to Christian faith and that has another clause of the Lord’s Prayer upon it - ‘Thy kingdom come’. This priest, seeing his death with active resignation, wanted a statement placed on his grave for the cause that would outlast him, namely the ongoing, death-defying work of God to bring ‘the kingdom of this world to become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ’ (Revelation 11:15)
What a different feeling there is to those two stories, all the difference between passive and active resignation and its the latter I’m commending on our Patronal feast, the active resignation we see so notably in our Patron the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.
Faced not with death but with virginal conception - pregnancy outside marriage and its consequences as God-bearer - Mary says in this morning’s Gospel: Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Luke 1:38
Her bow to Gabriel celebrated in art for a thousand years is no passive bow to fate but the active acceptance stated in the Creed For us and for our salvation [the only Son of God] was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man.
We magnify Mary our Patron on account of that collaboration in service of God’s kingdom. Through her ‘Yes’ to God, given to Gabriel, salvation is ours. Through that ‘Yes’ confirmed in the hardships she bore Mary models to us active obedience. Simeon prophesied her heart would be ‘pierced with a sword’ in Luke 2:35 and we see this fulfilled in Mary’s presence at the foot of the Cross, obediently following her Son in his sufferings. She is model Christian, one with us, modelling active resignation to God’s will in sorrow and in joy. At the Marriage of Cana she gives advice to the servants we take for ourselves: ‘Do whatever [Jesus] tells you!’ John 2:5.
What is the Lord telling us here at St Mary’s Balcombe on our Patronal Festival?
I asked the church officers and this was their reply: ‘we need a priest, someone who loves Word and Spirit, but also the colourful tapestry of village life, and wants to lead us to Jesus and communicate in that environment. Someone who keeps things transforming, who’ll help us be part of the subversive work of the kingdom of God’.
I sensed the Holy Spirit behind that perception and thought it important to repeat it to us all this morning as we mark a full year of our pastoral vacancy. As that vacancy continues - and all the evidence is that vacancies can continue and continue and continue - good will come as God’s people draw close to God and with Mary make the most of the divinely appointed challenge.
Yes, we should see the interregnum in that positive light. The lights didn’t go out in Balcombe when Fr Desmond left to carry his light elsewhere. Each one of us has in blessed Mary an upbeat reminder of how facing hardship, as in the vacancy, can bring faith aflame. This little light of mine I’m gonna make it shine!
Ten days ago I was in the congregation at a midweek eucharist and after Communion I sensed there was a sort of cobweb in my right eye. Off I went to A&E and the next morning A&E at Brighton Eye Hospital. I arrived mid-morning and left before lunch having received laser treatment for a retinal tear. Alongside that miracle I was given assurance that my brain will find its way through the cobweb, which I can still see when I chose to focus on it, and that it should fade away in the weeks and months ahead.
It's a challenge to set the Lord before me, as Psalm 34 verse 5 invites me, look to the Lord and be radiant. Active resignation is a gift but it's also a struggle, a challenge to get on with what God wants, looking away from myself to the needs of others and the agenda of the kingdom of God.
This morning as a congregation gathered on its Patronal Festival we have a similar challenge to see ourselves preparing the way not just for a new priest - so we can then sit back - but for the agenda God has in Balcombe and its surrounds. Remember Our Lady’s counsel: ‘Do whatever [Jesus] tells you!’.
As individuals we also have our struggles in which the gift of discernment is so very important. Sometimes it's a clear invitation, as in my eye floaters, to look forward in faith. Two men looked through prison bars. One saw mud and one saw stars.
Other times we need to pray for the Holy Spirit to show us what’s most important in our predicament. That knowledge when acted upon can have very large consequences as our lives move more towards what’s good, an upward trajectory which can take us out of darkness more rapidly than we’d ever think could occur.
Life can’t be lived without suffering but as believers we can see hardship as God’s megaphone, his way of showing us what’s most important. Where we catch on to this, see things we need to put right in our lives and circumstances, good things always come our way. We just need to fix the things we know need fixing that we also know are within our power to fix. Something easier said than done though it's good to say it in the pulpit - there’s no word of God without power!
As we offer this eucharist may our prayer be that of blessed Mary: Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.
Here we are at St Mary’s, actively resigned to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness for ourselves and for the people in our village.
Here we are each one of us, prepared to offer God our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice actively resigned to his will, to his praise and service, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be praise with blessed Mary, saints in heaven and saints on earth!
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