{"id":160,"date":"2007-09-09T13:46:22","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T13:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/mass-at-mariazell.html"},"modified":"2007-09-09T13:46:22","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T13:46:22","slug":"mass-at-mariazell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/mass-at-mariazell.html","title":{"rendered":"Mass at Mariazell"},"content":{"rendered":"

For now – I mean for now<\/em>\u00a0 – we’re going to ignore the whole Amazing Technicolor Vestments issue. And <\/em>the Pikachu ball. (?!)
\nAnd we’ll meditate on the homily.<\/a>
\nOkay?
\n(Remember, this is Saturday’s outdoor Mass, the feast of the Nativity of Mary.)
\n\u201cTo gaze upon Christ\u201d is the motto of this day. For one who is searching, this summons repeatedly turns into a spontaneous plea, a plea addressed especially to Mary, who has given us Christ as her Son: \u201cShow us Jesus!\u201d Let us make this prayer today with our whole heart; let us make this prayer above and beyond the present moment, as we inwardly seek the Face of the Redeemer. \u201cShow us Jesus!\u201d Mary responds, showing him to us in the first instance as a child. God has made himself small for us. God comes not with external force, but he comes in the powerlessness of his love, which is where his true strength lies. He places himself in our hands. He asks for our love. He invites us to become small ourselves, to come down from our high thrones and to learn to be childlike before God. He speaks to us informally. He asks us to trust him and thus to learn how to live in truth and love. The child Jesus naturally reminds us also of all the children in the world, in whom he wishes to come to us. Children who live in poverty; who are exploited as soldiers; who have never been able to experience the love of parents; sick and suffering children, but also those who are joyful and healthy. Europe has become child-poor: we want everything for ourselves, and place little trust in the future. Yet the earth will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished \u2013 when the face of God no longer shines upon the earth. Where God is, there is the future.
\n\u201cTo gaze upon Christ\u201d: let us look briefly now at the Crucified One above the high altar. God saved the world not by the sword, but by the Cross. In dying, Jesus extends his arms. This, in the first place, is the posture of the Passion, in which he lets himself be nailed to the Cross for us, in order to give us his life. Yet outstretched arms are also the posture of one who prays, the stance assumed by the priest when he extends his arms in prayer: Jesus transformed the Passion, his suffering and his death, into prayer, into an act of love for God and for humanity. That, finally, is why outstretched arms are also a gesture of embracing, by which he wishes to draw us to himself, to enfold us in his loving hands. In this way he is the image of the living God, he is God himself, and we may entrust ourselves to him.
\n\u201cTo gaze upon Christ!\u201d If we do this, we realize that Christianity is more than and different from a moral code, from a series of requirements and laws. It is the gift of a friendship that lasts through life and death: \u201cNo longer do I call you servants, but friends\u201d (Jn 15:15), the Lord says to his disciples. We entrust ourselves to this friendship. Yet precisely because Christianity is more than a moral system, because it is the gift of friendship, for this reason it also contains within itself great moral strength, which is so urgently needed today on account of the challenges of our time. If with Jesus Christ and his Church we constantly re-read the Ten Commandments of Sinai, entering into their full depth, then a great teaching unfolds before us. It is first and foremost a \u201cyes\u201d to God, to a God who loves us and leads us, who carries us and yet allows us our freedom: indeed, it is he who makes our freedom real (the first three commandments). It is a \u201cyes\u201d to the family (fourth commandment), a \u201cyes\u201d to life (fifth commandment), a \u201cyes\u201d to responsible love (sixth commandment), a \u201cyes\u201d to solidarity, to social responsibility and to justice (seventh commandment), a \u201cyes\u201d to truth (eighth commandment) and a \u201cyes\u201d to respect for other people and for what is theirs (ninth and tenth commandments). By the strength of our friendship with the living God we live this manifold \u201cyes\u201d and at the same time we carry it as a signpost into our world.
\n\u201cShow us Jesus!\u201d It was with this plea to the Mother of the Lord that we set off on our journey here. This same plea will accompany us in our daily lives. And we know that Mary hears our prayer: yes, whenever we look towards Mary, she shows us Jesus. Thus we can find the right path, we can follow it step by step, filled with joyful confidence that the path leads into the light \u2013 into the joy of eternal Love. Amen.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For now – I mean for now\u00a0 – we’re going to ignore the whole Amazing Technicolor Vestments issue. And the Pikachu ball. (?!) And we’ll meditate on the homily. Okay? (Remember, this is Saturday’s outdoor Mass, the feast of the Nativity of Mary.) \u201cTo gaze upon Christ\u201d is the motto of this day. For one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pope","category-religion"],"yoast_head":"\nMass at Mariazell - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/mass-at-mariazell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mass at Mariazell - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For now – I mean for now\u00a0 – we’re going to ignore the whole Amazing Technicolor Vestments issue. And the Pikachu ball. (?!) 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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