Blessings on your Advent

This photo of Mary painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner in 1898 was used by Brother Michael Laratonda, FMS on this past weekend's Advent Retreat entitled The Divine Pregnancy.  The oil painting captures Mary sitting in stillness as she is visited by Gabriel.  Mary is portrayed as a teen age girl in a simple and rumpled peasant dress without halo or any other holy attribute.  Gabriel appears only as a shaft of light. The original painting was placed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1899.  I share with you my own small reflection on  the painting, after Brother Michael's illuminating retreat, hoping it might  resonate with a piece of your heart.  

Advent

I sit still and ask for nothing

and in some way everything comes to me.

I sit and try to stay in the truth

of who I am

of who God calls me to be

and in some way everything fills me.

Is Advent that moment in history

where the invitation to stay empty

teaches us about the fullness that comes with emptiness?

Mary sat in stillness and silence. 

Did she feel empty

because she didn’t trust herself enough

to know if she should say yes?

Or did she simply

sit in her emptiness

and say “your will be done”

and allow the extravagance of God

to fill her emptiness?

And is that what it truly means

to allow ourselves

to be mother

to incarnate the divinity

so that others can see

the God who is still and quiet within,

the God who transforms

our emptiness, our nothingness,

into the womb of divine life.