A silent heart…ready to receive the incarnation of his Word.
A newly conceived baby is silent, perfectly silent. In the first moments of our existence, we were silent. The saints teach us that to find God, to return to God, is to return to that point in time when we came forth from God in silence.
That’s why God found Mary ready for his plan. He found her, unlike the rest of us, still in that silence. The silence of one who had no concern for self, of one who didn’t care whether or not she was noticed, whether or not she was appreciated, whether or not she was loved.
The silence of one who was concerned only about others. The silence of one who lived without fear because she had surrendered herself completely to the will and plans of God.
Mary lived in a silence of eager expectation, a silence of purity of heart. All her desires, all her longings were focused on the coming of the salvation of God. And because her inner being was always bowed down in total submission, she lived in the silence of adoration before the holiness and glory of God.
It was not because she had an empty womb but because she had an empty heart, a silent heart, that God found her available and ready to receive the incarnation of his Word.
In these days before Christmas, let us ask the Mother of God to take each of us into her silence, the silence of humility and surrender, the silence of poverty and of longing and adoration. Let us ask her to take us into that silence in which we had our beginning and in which we will have our end.
Then the Holy Spirit will come upon us and overshadow us like he did Mary. Then the Father will beget, in the depths of our silence, his eternal Son. And at the same time that he does this, he will bring forth the true child of God that is our secret being.
Reprinted from Restoration, December 2000. Fr. Sharkey, a Member of MH, died in 2011.
