From Season to Season

His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him. He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. - Luke 1:50-52 Our tradition has ascribed many titles to Mary. But I don’t believe there are many of us who would call the Mother of God a revolutionary. But in her Magnificat , which is re-told in today’s Gospel , we hear Mary speaking as a prophet: The One who has done great things in and for her is also changing the order of the world. The poor will be lifted up, the hungry will be fed, and the least of all the peoples will be glorified. There is no embrace of the status quo in her words. Instead, they celebrate the seismic shift that the Incarnation caused in hearts and in the world itself. John Howard Yoder , a Mennonite theologian, describes Mary’s words in this way: What it says is the language, not of sweet maidens, but of Maccabees: it speaks of dethroning the m...

There have been moments in the history of faith, which is at the heart of the human story, in which women, men, and even children, have made decisions about the course or orientation of their lives that have changed history itself. Like that “ shot heard ‘round the world ” of April 19, 1775, marking the first military action of the American Revolution, certain acts have opened up new pathways and modes of faith that have forever shaped the lives of countless believers through the ages.    The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio   Some of these might seem quite simple, perhaps because we know the stories so well: Mary’s fiat ( Luke 1:26-38 ), Saint Peter and Saint Andrew's decision to get out of their boat to follow the wandering Rabbi ( Matthew 4:18-20 ), and Saint Matthew leaving his tax collecting post (cf. Matthew 9:9-13 ). Others seem, somehow, far away and remote to us: Saint Lawrence presenting the poor, the Church’s true treasure, ...