If I dared to say what I really think…
THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab;I Cor. 17:20-27; Lk. 1:39-56
Mary represents an individual who accepted God at face value, entered into his life with fullness, without reservation. She embraced every one in embracing Jesus.
I recently told a rabbi friend who has taken a new synagogue to call me any time, twenty four hours a day, if she needed someone to talk to. She commented, “that is being really nice of you.” It is not being “nice” to open up your self to caring for others, to meeting them where they are. It is a response to the love and grace of God. God has no boundaries, we are the one’s who place the boundaries around our relationships. We are called to care, to love people for who they are, to simply be with people, in their times of celebration, and their times of stress. To care is not doing, it is simply being. It is simply sitting with someone outside of their tent as they cry over a friend who has died of an over dose, it is sitting on the street being shown drawings by a person. Caring is simply being present.
Wendell Berry wrote:
“Care. . .rests upon genuine religion. Care allows creatures to escape our explanations into their actual presence and their essential mystery. In taking care of our fellow creatures, we acknowledge that they are not ours; we acknowledge that they belong to an order and harmony of which we ourselves are parts. To answer to the perpetual crisis of our presence in this abounding and dangerous world, we have only the perpetual obligation of care.”
I have looked into the face of murderers, of neo-nazis, of racist, of homophobes, of all sorts of evil, and in each one I see the face of Christ, in each one I see that need to be loved, and it is only through loving each other is their hope. It is not easy, it is hell–but the joy that comes from that fulfillment. Wendell Berry is right in that “we have only the perpetual obligation of care.”
+Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw., D.Min.
P.O. Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
415-305-2124
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