How big is your 'yes'?

Mary’s ‘yes,’ her fiat, embraced both the joys that would come as well as the trials.  She would experience the glory of the angels at Jesus’ humble birth in the stable, and she would walk with him to his death.  Mary did not take back her ‘yes’ when it brought suffering into her life.  She did not regret her ‘yes’ when things became difficult, nor did she become resentful or self-protective or lose her trust in God’s plan.

Our sins and sufferings tend to cause us to pull back or rethink our ‘yes’ to the Lord Jesus.  There have been many times when I felt burned for what I thought was a generous ‘yes’ to the Lord.  Too often the result was that I became resentful and less willing to say ‘yes’ again.

We Brothers dedicated this past academic year to meditating on how Mary our Mother can aid us in understanding our own life of consecration, particularly our charism to proclaim the All-Sufficiency of Jesus.  If you end up asking yourself the same question we did – “How big is my ‘yes’?” – I expect you would see that what we often think is a very generous response on our part is often tinged to some degree with self-interest and seeking our own will rather than the Lord’s will.

As I pondered this question the Lord had posed, I also experienced that he is willing to heal these areas of our hearts where we have felt burned.  He wants our ‘yes’ to not only be magnanimous and generous, but also joyous.  He wants to renew our joyful ‘yes,’ for our individual yeses like Mary’s, are not just for ourselves, but for those around us and beyond to the wider life of the Church, where our ‘yes’ is able to transform lives and ‘make all things new’ in her Son.

This article originally appeared in our Fall 2018 newsletter.