SHE WHO IS TO GIVE BIRTH

PRAYER MOMENT                      

Monday 8 September 2014, The Birthday of Mary, Mother of God.

SHE WHO IS TO GIVE BIRTH

Pause. Be still in God’s presence.

Reading: “The Lord is therefore going to abandon them until the time when she who is to give birth gives birth.” (Micah 5:1-4)

Reflection. In respectful recognition of the law of nature the feast f the Annunciation comes exactly nine months before Christmas. And the feast of the birth of Mary comes nine months to the day, after the Immaculate Conception on December 8. These unnoticed events herald the whole hidden, fragile story of God’s way of working among us. It is all so quiet and simple, ‘like dew in April, that falleth on the grass’, as the old English carol puts it. God comes in weakness, ‘born of a virgin’, to transform our world from within. It is so silent and seemingly precarious that people hardly pay attention. Yet in our midst a new creation is coming to birth. Yesterday I passed through Chivhu and was struck by the hundreds of people just moving around. What were they doing? And what will they do again today? They live from hand to mouth ‘struggling to survive.’ This seems far away from the great plan of God ‘to make all things new’. Yet that is what the Lord is doing and he invites us to give all our energy to work with him in the task.

Prayer. Lord Jesus, you work among us quietly - hardly noticed. Help us to give our energies to work with you in all things.. Amen.

David Harold-Barry SJ