Transitions

Major life transitions are always tricky.  You have to have the proper balance among virtue, strength, poise, resign, trust, openness, and closedness.  A small Catholic university with which I have some familiarity and small-city Texas is just a little different from Fruit and Nut Central, California.  It's been a crazy ride, but, after 5 solid months of being here, I'm finally starting to adjust :-)  I have a good job, good friends, an opportunity to go to the Latin Mass and meet people of the same mindset as myself, and I sing in a good choir

Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quid retribuit mihi?
What shall I render unto the Lord for all that He hath rendered unto me?

It makes me wonder...what was the major life transition for Our Lady like?  She was just a young girl when the Angel rocked her world.  The prophecies rang through her ears: Behold, a virgin shall conceive..., By His stripes, we were healed..., He hath born the sins of many...  What an overwhelming and terrifying message.  And yet...through it all...she rose to the call, accepted  her "vocatio", as one called by God, even by name: FIAT.  But after that moment in the Incarnation/Annunciation, the Angel departed from her.  In Christoph Cardinal Schönborn's new book The Joy of Being a Priest (Ignatius Press, 2010), he describes Mary after this departure as being left with no consolation (con+solatio = to be with [another] in solitude), no ecstacies, no visions, nothing - save the promise of seven swords.  And the promise of VICTORY.  Mary "held all these things in her heart".  She didn't complain, she didn't protest, she didn't even defend herself when Joseph found out she was pregnant.  Assumedly, she would have accepted the quiet divorce from her upright husband.  What a burden it must have been to go through life alone.  At least, that's what we, on a human level, would think.  But Mary was the Theotokos, mother of God, full-of-grace, tabernacle of the Holy Ghost, one without blemish, without sin.  She was human, yes, but she knew better than any of us do that she was never alone.  She threw herself entirely upon the mercy and the love of God.  Her Magnificat is arguably the most glorious praise a human being could have ever rendered to God.  "The Almighty has done great things for me: HOLY is His Name."  She was called to a Love and an obedience so far above our own levels of comprehension, and she did not deny her Master.  (Side note: Reading St. Alphonsus Liguori on obedience is one of the most humbling and most eye-opening exhortations I've ever read.  It reminds me how attached to my own will I am every time.  Obedience is most pleasing to God, even if it sounds crazy, even if you don't understand it.)

"What shall I render unto the Lord...?"  Trust.  Humility.  Obedience.

"Do you truly trust Me?"
"Yes, Lord, I do."
"Then why do you keep worrying?  It has been taken care of."

Note the use of past tense.  From all eternity, He has a plan for us.  We worry on our own ends to no avail.