“But Mary is the equal sign.” (Venerable Fulton Sheen, “A Year with Mary”).
I read something very beautiful the other day, written by Venerable Fulton Sheen in his beautiful book called “A Year with Mary”, and it went like this…
“There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His own mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written.”
And I have been reflecting on that melody of the Blessed Virgin Mary… You see, when Christ suffered during His Passion and Death, part of His anguish was caused because He could see – with perfection – the whole implication of sin. You see, what really happened to God Himself during His Passion and Death, was that He could see all the ruin of all His plans – He could see how the melody that He had created was destroyed by the discord created through evil and sin in the world.
And I have been reflecting upon the anguish that my Beloved surely felt at such a realisation as that.
You see God created the PERFECT melody. And… “He saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:12). In other words, God’s plan for humanity was GOOD – it was perfect and beautiful and wonderful – like the most perfect melody ever composed, and then we – through SIN – messed it up! And I have been thinking about how that must have felt to God to have His PERFECT plans messed up… To see PERFECTLY, the ruin of humanity and the suffering that would bring...
You see, when something small goes wrong and it disrupts my plans – delaying me even a little – I get upset. I worry about the implications of that “disaster” on the rest of my plans... Just consider (an albeit) extreme example of a very little mistake – waking up five minutes late in the morning…
Perhaps being five minutes late in getting out of bed in the morning will result in my children missing the bus to school. That might mean that I need to drive them to school instead of their catching the bus, which means I shall potentially miss the first few hours of work for the day. In missing those hours of work, I risk losing my job or not being taken seriously in my work because I am often late. In losing my job there may be added pressure on my marriage caused by financial insecurity, and this could cause my husband and I to argue more frequently and cause disruption in our home, and even potentially a marriage breakdown…
Now, I have used a ridiculous example for illustrative purposes, but my point is that if I magnify that five minute sleep in ad infinitum, I can imagine the utter anguish of God…
You see, God made everything GOOD and perfect and wonderful. He made a melody for us to live that would be more marvellous than anything hat the human mind could fathom. And then we ruined it – in a moment – using the most perfect part of ourselves, which is our free will…
And I have been reflecting on that too… Because God also gave me an example of a perfect melody – for “…Mary is the equal sign.” And when I think about the wonder of contemplating such beauty in my eternal life, I stand transfixed… Because if His Human Mother is as wonderful as that, how much more GLORIOUS is GOD?
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.