November 17, 2024 Essay: Mary, Beacon of Hope
“We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision.” With these words, Pope Francis has introduced the Jubilee Year of 2025 whose theme is: “Pilgrims of Hope.” As we seek to understand how this Jubilee Year relates to our own personal lives of faith, we can look to Mary as a woman whose hope we can emulate.
Mary was a young woman whose Jewish faith was steeped in hope. She, and her people, had a profound trust that God would fulfill the promises of God to the people of God. Their trust in God was grounded in their history; a history which repeatedly demonstrated God’s fidelity to the people of God even when they were grossly unfaithful to God. God never wavered in God’s faithfulness to the people of God. This is why they knew deep within their hearts that their hope in God would not leave them disappointed.
Raised in this tradition of hope, Mary placed her trust in God when God reached out to her and invited her to be the mother of God’s Son. Mary’s response was not robotic. She wrestled with what God asked of her and questioned how she could be the mother of God’s Son. Her “Yes” to God was an act of tremendous faith in God and an expression of her hope that the promise of her son would be fulfilled for her and her people. Living in a spirit of hope, a spirit of confident trust in God, could not have been easy for Mary given what she faced in her life.
A devout Jew, she saw her son in open conflict with the religious leadership and saw that conflict grow in intensity to the point where she knew her son could face the fate of the prophets before him. How could he fulfill the hope he represented, if he were to die a prophet’s death?
Dying that death, one has to wonder if Mary’s hope did not falter. What did she ponder as she held the lifeless body of her only son in her lap, looking into the eyes that once filled her with joy?
While her faith may have faltered, we know her hope was not crushed because the last time we see Mary in the scriptures she is at prayer with the other disciples on the feast of Pentecost. She continued to be in relationship with the God to whom she had said “Yes” so many years before. Her “Yes” had brought her incalculable pain and sorrow, but it also brought her the joy of knowing that her son had vanquished death and was alive forever. The promise he represented had, indeed, been fulfilled. Her hope had not been in vain.
What lessons does Mary offer us, if we are to live in hope even in times that test our faith? To live in hope, we must be persons of prayer. We must cultivate a living relationship with God in which we consciously call to mind the many ways God has proven to be faithful to God’s people. We also have to call to mind our own personal experience of God’s fidelity to us and of God’s gratuitous love for us. Remembering our own lived experience of God’s fidelity and love, it makes sense for us to persevere in hope, even in the darkest moments of our lives, because we know that God will not disappoint us. If we remain faithful to God, God will prove to be our vindication. This is the hope in which we are all called to live our lives. Let us pray to Mary in this Jubilee year that by her intercession she will help “fan the flame of hope given to us.”