FRIDAY POTPOURRI: NEVER COUNT YOURSELF OUT

Now here’s a case when I will use the term “the spirit of Vatican II” and think it has merit.  As we head into the last throws of advent (or perhaps slow boil of advent would be better,) we enter that part of Lumen Gentium that makes clear Mary’s role in salvation history – Totally unplanned which makes it cool.

 

One of the reasons the Harry Potter books were so popular was that it held out hope that even if it seemed completely unlikely, there is a chance that you are special; your ordinary life was masking great power, notoriety, talent, and all that.  So can you think of being a young girl in a backwater town, dirt poor, and of no note?  What if, in actuality, your life was actually part of one of the greatest stories ever told – of the greatest family lines in history – of a dynasty that would last forever?  And look at you sitting at home wishing something exciting would happen in this one light town.

 

The story concerning Mary goes back to Genesis (para 55 of LG).  There will be a virgin and a conquering of the serpent.  In Isaiah further prophecies are made.  Throughout Scripture, a blurry picture becomes clearer and clearer until one night it snaps into sharp focus on a young, faith filled woman, by the announcement of an angel.  From obscurity she is plucked, though in God’s eye she was never out of the center of His plan.  From her our God is given flesh and entrusted to her care until He could go about the business of saving us from our self destructive ways.

 

(This is not in this paragraph but my own thought.)  You, Christian, are not much different.  Scratch just below the surface there is greatness.  It is not in your wealth, your ability to command, your ancestry, or your prospects (or lack thereof!)  All that will pass and be forgotten.  But like in a C. S. Lewis novel, you have already been named a king or queen with great dignity, inheritance, and rule, and it will only come to light for the faithful who remain true to their nature and enter into the kingdom of our heavenly Father.