Blessed Is She Who Believes

On my study wall at Carpenter House I have a reproduction of a fresco by Fra Angelico depicting Mary at the moment of the annunciation.  I bought it in a cheap shop in Florence, Italy because when I saw it in the window in 1973 I simply had to have it.  The fresco shows Mary stretching her neck unnaturally forward to hear the angel's message.  In her gentle face is an expression of wonder mixed with what seems to me is uncertain joy.

I keep this image in sight constantly to remind me of Mary’s faith, her capacity to hear and trust God's leading in her life.  The angel told her, in whatever mysterious way angels tell, that God needed her to bear a child-yes, a child when she was only betrothed, a child who would be God’s own instrument of salvation.  It must have been a startling, unthinkable message; but Mary said “yes”: "I am the handmaiden of the Lord; be it to me according to your word."

Those are among the richest words in the Bible.  They are words of trust and surrender-words that we are each called to say, with Mary, at various points in our lives when God nudges us forward into his mysterious purpose.

Frederick Buechner allows that “faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession.  It is on-again-off-again rather then once-and-for-all.  Faith is not being sure where you are going but going anyway.  A journey without
maps…”  (Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC).

It is something like this that Hebrews means in Chapter 11: “now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen….by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called…and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”  Such faith,
Paul says, makes us right with God.  It is what sets us free.

There is a pernicious rumor in some quarters that faith is about certainty-about knowing exactly what God means us to do, exactly what is right and wrong.  In our age of anxiety such certainty is seductive-a way to escape our human fear and vulnerability.  The irony is that such an understanding of faith really means to put us in control, rather than God.

The faith of Mary recognizes that God is in control and has purposes for our life that we can never see completely.  It recognizes that in all the most essential things we must put ourselves in God’s hands, trust, and let go.  The blessed assurance of the saints is that God is faithful and is "working his purpose out as year succeeds to year."

I heard Henri Nouwen once compare faith to a trapeze artist.  Those artful circus flyers have to swing on a bar across the empty air, let go, and be caught by the other, the “catcher.”  The rule is ‘do not try to catch the catcher; the catcher will catch you.’  God, Nouwen said, is the catcher, and God has good hands.

As the poet Whittier once wrote in a similar vein,

The steps of faith fall on the seeming void,
And find the rock beneath.

It is such trust that we can have when we know and love God who Jesus assures us is always with us and who, even in the midst of hell, always intends good for us.

“Blessed is she who believed”, Elizabeth said of Mary.  I believe that this is meant to be said of us as well.  For we are never more blessed -- more whole, free, in sync -- than when we live in absolute trust in the god who made us, loves us, and is working his purpose in us.  So with Mother Mary let us keep stretching our necks forward to listen to believe, and to say “yes.”

Your servant in Christ,
The Rt. Rev. Henry N. Parsley, Jr.
Bishop of Alabama