To be wholly God’s because He is wholly ours

As we approach our great Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Prioress, Sister Nicola, shares a reflection with the community on how Mary shows us the way to becoming wholly God’s and how our trust and efforts to draw closer to Him are never wasted…

We are a community devoted to the worship of God. But what is it to worship? The Concise Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definition: “Worship – reverent homage or service paid to God; adoration or devotion comparable to this felt or shown towards person or principle.”

Although true, I find that statement a bit underwhelming. It doesn’t explain why I felt drawn to the spirit of Carmel, to the radical choice of beginning the ascent of the mountain of God.

In the Church of England wedding ceremony (holy matrimony), when the ring is placed on the fourth finger of the bride, the groom says, “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow …”. Now that is much better, more committed and all-consuming, with no compromise as to the fullness of the exchange between the wedding partners.

The Catechism (of the Catholic Church, 1994) also captures the response of a woman who knows herself to be called to make her reply to God’s love the whole purpose of her life. Of Mary’s prayer, it says: “In the faith of his humble handmaid, the Gift of God found the acceptance he had awaited from the beginning of time. She whom the Almighty made ‘full of grace’ responds by offering her whole being: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be [done] to me according to Your word.” Fiat. This is Christian prayer: to be wholly God’s because He is wholly ours.” (p.558 section on prayer)

This is what the upcoming feast of Our Lady tells me, the miracle to be believed in with my whole self, that we are “to be wholly God’s because He is wholly ours.”

This would be too much to believe in if it were not for the fact (as we believe it to be) of the birth of Jesus from a human womb, of Mary. This act of grace in a woman whose soul was free and simple enough to allow unhindered action to the divine source of Life.

In his book Healed by Love, Fr Daniel Chowning OCD, writes: “… God’s indwelling presence is the source of our beauty and dignity. We are more than the shape of our bodies, the colour of our hair and eyes, the clothes we wear, our material possessions, our family background and education, our sinful or emotionally wounded history. God loves us; we are temples of the living God. If love is woven into the very fibres of our being … therefore it is not something accidental to our nature, but is at the source of our being. Love is what most defines us and is the energy that directs our lives. Our true self is rooted in Love. After all, this Love is the end for which we were created.”

Now, this is both exciting and comforting, and a bit scary too. If I want to know who I am, I have to try to love my neighbour and devote myself to prayer. Spending my time alone with God in prayer is probably the only thing I can ‘do’ for God. That is, I choose to spend quality time with God rather than use that time for something else.

EVERYTHING done for love is valuable and gives a bit of space for the new creation of the Kingdom amongst us.

On the other hand, there are many things we can do for one another in community, which of course includes spending our time with one another, listening to and talking with our sisters at recreation, on walk days, community meeting, and so on. But also there are the multitude of practical services we render to one another, no matter how small. Please never doubt that the value of your gestures of kindness, cheerfulness and forbearance are every bit as effective in creating a space for divine Love even if one’s range of activity contracts due to age or ill health. EVERYTHING done for love is valuable and gives a bit of space for the new creation of the Kingdom amongst us.

Mary gave God the space to act, and Jesus came forth into our world. We are asked to do that too – it’s why we are here. Carmel is the spacious place provided by hearts wide open to God’s love. A Carmelite invites Him in, gives free reign to the Spirit of Love to act daily, trusting that the concrete events and demands of each day are His voice to us, even if we don’t understand where it is all leading to.

Mary shows us that our trust will not be disappointed. Our Carmelite saints also assure us that all our efforts are not wasted, that the journey up the mountain, through the years of our life, is something to rejoice in and not despair over, because God is close to us the whole time. He WANTS us to journey with Him, to share in the divine life, to bear fruit from our whole being and become complete in union with Him.

These are big claims, but why else would we sacrifice every other vocation in order to throw our life into God’s embrace within the enclosure of Carmel?

The liturgy of Our Lady of Mount Carmel presents a way of trying to express the sheer beauty of a human soul’s destiny to be united with the Godhead, of the marriage born of the desire of one partner for another. On a more mundane level, the final verse of the Little Hours hymn at None sums this up quite well:

O Godhead, here untouched, unseen,
All things created bear your trace;
the seed of glory sown in us
will flower when we see your face.

No matter how beautiful our liturgy, our images, our created natural world, our words and thoughts, nothing can compare to the promise of what is to come once a human soul is wholly united with Divine Love. That means you and me, in fact, every person who will open his or her heart to God. So on this feast we can thank Mary for her Fiat and ask for the grace to make it our own. There are no limits to what God can do with such a gift.