Fr. Michael Williams

‘Mary sat down at the Lord’s feet and listened to Him speaking’. Listening to the Lord is the theme of today’s gospel. Spending time in quiet prayer is an essential part of being a Christian; spending time at the Lord’s feet listening to Him.

There are a number of ways in which we can listen to Him. But first we need to distance ourselves from worrying and fretting about things. We need to clear our minds and give Our Lord the space to occupy them.

This calls for silence. Whenever we pray at home or in Church we need to quieten our minds from the many distractions that enter our minds. All too often we can be overcome with distractions and end up forgetting why we are coming to pray. Praying is sitting down at the Lord’s feet and listening to Him. This what May does in today’s gospel. All too often our prayer can become so many demands of the Lord. ‘I want, I want’. But if our prayer becomes listening to the Lord our lives will become what God wants of us.

Mary listened when times were tough too. The Scriptures reveal that Mary sat at the Lord’s feet when they were nailed to the Cross. She was there listening to His loving heart on Mount Calvary amidst the pain and suffering. She listened to His words uttered from the Cross, ‘Father, forgive them’, ‘Behold your Mother’ and the other ones, but she also contemplated His sufferings. No doubt she listened with tears falling from her eyes.

Contemplating the suffering Christ, does not mean we get all the answers how we want them. But it allows us to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ among us; it allows us to adopt the mentality of St Paul who says, ‘It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church’. That is quite an astonishing statement from St Paul, who seems to be suggesting that Christ is suffering in Him for the benefit of the Church, Christ’s Body.

We too can unite our sufferings to Christ for the benefit of His Body, the Church. We can offer up our daily tasks, struggles and difficulties to God as an offering to Him for the good of souls. There is no more powerful form of prayer, as the great saints all testify.

Tradition has it that after the Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven, the Mary of today’s gospel, went to France to live a solitary life of prayer and penance, continuing to listen to the Lord and contemplate His loving ways.

In our lives, whatever we are called to, let us make a commitment to listen to the Lord by contemplating His life, His sufferings (uniting ours to His), and also contemplating His Resurrection and new life, which gives us hope beyond this world. Mary contemplated those realities, let’s follow suit.