“Oh, come!”
On this 4th Sunday of Advent, the next part of Florin Callerand’s text on “The Blessing of hunger and thirst for justice,” which we shared the first part of last Sunday, will nourish our lives with joy as we head towards Christmas. Where can we draw strength from to continue moving forward, if it is not by joining Mary’s elan, driven by the breath of the Holy Spirit?
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“Oh, come!”
We could not close the Gospel without considering the two scenes that frame it: in the beginning, the annunciation-visitation, and at the end, in martyrdom, the cry of “I’m thirsty!”
The elan of Virgin Mary in the optative reply to her God’s request reveals just the kind of hunger and thirst she is consumed by: “Oh, be it unto me according to thy word." (Luke 1.38)
Teilhard de Chardin in his essay, The Eternal Feminine, truly felt that the incarnation of the Son in the human condition, was only possible because Mary called her God with ardour and irresistible passion, an “Oh! Come!” louder than the five songs of the Hymn of Hymns altogether!
“God”, says Mary, the universal and eternal Feminine “I drew him toward me long before you...
Long before man had measured and understood my power,
and divined the meaning of my attraction, the Lord had already designed me completely
in his Wisdom, and I had won his Heart.
Do you think that without my Purity to enchant him,
he would never have come down, to flesh in the middle of his Creation?
Love alone is capable of moving the being.”
Written during the war (1916-1919),
“The Eternel Feminine” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
The scene of the visitation reveals, at the start, that Mary lives with a “hunger and thirst for justice.” After having received the answer to her fervent prayers, how could she keep the fruit of it for herself? So much so that her prayer translated into the universal, yet still the somewhat confused desire of the whole of humanity! Luke’s Gospel tells us, in his own way, characterising the decisive elements: “During those days, Mary set off eagerly” (with zeal and ardour) (Luke 1.39). There appears to be a great difference between Mary and many of the disciples and apostles. They need to receive a missive from God, a mission... “I establish you a proclaimer of the vision in which I have just shown myself to you.” (Acts 22-15) “Go, teach in every nation!” (Matthew 28.19) Here Mary alone makes the decision. She does not need to be sent. She leaves with great haste! “Eagerly” as the text states. The initiative comes from the heart. “When we love, we do not feel the weight of the task,” writes Saint Augustine.
Mary, doubtless, also takes risks. We can imagine that with Joseph there will be other problems. How will he accept that she is leaving? Who will she go with? For how long? Then she must also explain to him what happened to her during the annunciation... (Matthew 1.19sq)
Mary’s enthusiasm wants to share the message, grace, the presence she received... The hunger and thirst of apostleship. As it is only fair that others benefit from the event!
No matter how difficult it becomes for her, Mary does not hesitate. It’s urgent! “God is impatiently patient,” said a cardinal at a time when the brakes were starting to grind, during the Council! This text by Saint Luke speaks twice of John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s breast. Elizabeth does not receive inspiration from the Spirit, she is filled with it. She exclaims! Mary can not have arrived dragging her feet! As for her greeting, it is she who starts this whole physical and pneumatological commotion: here is the mother of the Lord and the Lord is with her, opting to live in her house, far from the sacred temple! This has never been seen before!
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As for Mary, she lets out her breath in a long prophetic sigh, flying over the whole story of the greeting with a single wingbeat (Luke 1.46-56) A happy Magnificat, made up of sections of psalms, as many as there are words. This distinguishes a singular imprint as if we could catch her breath, although the Blessed one’s beatitude is immense, surely worthy of the God whom she already carries within, “The God of hunger and thirst for justice.” We work out what the secret village life of these three people, passionate about God must have been like Jesus, Mary, Joseph!
So we should not be surprised by the insistence of Saint John, who, before making us hear Jesus’ “Tetelestai,” “Everything is consumed” (John 19, 30), introduces the revelation of God’s secret in a single word, thirst!
Never has any philosophy or theology presented God as a “beggar for love.” Never have they dared to say that the pattern of the creation resided in the call of creatures predestined by God to share his love, nor that all the history of the worlds should be a companionship on a journey to the eternal, in an adventure of discovery and shared progress between heaven and earth, without ever being able to separate them!
Saint John said that “For all of Scripture to be written, Jesus would write, I'm thirsty!” Much more than the first and true meaning of the physical thirst of a dying man, this reflection by the apostle lifts the veil, or tears it apart to reveal that at Mary’s side he has just discovered, “God is love!” And he is sure to have said everything about Jesus, truly, as he announced, “He will attract everything to him!” (see John 12.32)
It is really in the ardent fire of this fourth blessing that the beginning of the end took place, the earthly adventure of the Son of God, continually accompanied by the hunger and thirst for holy justice in the person that is Mary, his mother! This is also the blessing of the disciples-apostles at the heart of the fire.
Florin Callerand, 19th January 1991
“A poor person calls God responds” © 2006,
Extracts p.204 - 209
French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon
"Viens Seigneur et change nos coeurs", CD Tissage d'or 4 (Communauté de la Roche d'or)
To see the lyrics in French of the music "Viens Seigneur et change nos coeurs"