Have you ever played a game where you close your eyes, and without moving or lifting your feet from the floor, gradually lean your body? When you are at the point of losing balance and falling down, someone’s hands catches you, and with a little push they help you back on your feet! The more you lean, the more you have to trust not in yourself but in the other person. You’ve to take risks, leaving your securities aside in order to leap into the unknown…
To abandon one’s securities means to be poor. To be poor like Mary is to live life with this attitude: “Let it be done unto me according to your Word” (Lk 1,38). She practiced detachment and trusted totally in Him, but at the same time she was in tune with her reality and lived like anyone else. She experienced loneliness and the difficult conditions of the birth of Jesus, the instability caused by Herod’s persecution which made her and her family go into exile in Egypt; afterwards she led a modest and simple life at the home in Nazareth. Mary lived and shared her life with the lowly and the poor of her village as one of them and suffered the same fate with them.
In our days, Mary continues to be present, for example, in the immigrant who has no secure home to live in, in those who suffer persecution, in every woman who is maltreated. Mary is with us no matter our condition: in times of loneliness, family problems, those who have lost the sense of life…, in fact, in “our poverties”. With her poor life, Mary invites us to trust in God knowing that He only asks that we be open to receive him and be willing to collaborate with his work. With that confidence, we call upon her because we believe she accompanies us in our world today.
Do I trust in God in the midst of the difficulties and the joys of each day?