It was a sweet moment between a current UD student and a former Blue Hen, both attending the morning Mass on the weekend of final exams last Sunday. As the current sophomore was sharing tales of her recent late nights and study-stress, the older gentleman standing nearby offered this exam moment from his own experience, which on the surface doesn’t seem to amount to much – and yet, I can’t get the image out of my heart.
As Mr. Sam explained it: As a freshman on campus back in the very-early 1970s, he had a really hard time his first year, with one class a particular challenge – and one he desperately needed to pass for his major. He had studied for weeks ahead of the final, pulling many late nights and asking for tutorial assistance. The day before that final final, he had called home collect (having waited to use the hallway dorm payphone), and told his Mom he would catch the Amtrak out of Newark late Tuesday night after the exam, hoping to arrive in Jersey around midnight. “I’ll find my way home, Mom. Don’t wait up.”
That next day, Mr. Sam trudged out of class, not feeling very confident about his exam success. It was cold and dark at this point, and he wasn’t even sure he’d make it in time to catch the train to Trenton. He was tempted, quite frankly, to just bag the whole college thing. “I was ready to quit,” he said, and tears still welled-up in his eyes these five decades later at the memory of that moment.
Into that very space of exhaustion and anxiety and desolation, however – at least in Sam’s memory – appeared a station wagon, one of those big American behemoths that came complete with wood-trim and could fit 10 kids unsafely in the tailgate. Slowly inching its way down Chapel Street, the car flashed its high beams and honked its horn, and the driver started calling-out his name.
“Who in the world …?” As he approached the car -- still somewhat of a vague shadow in the dark -- Sam realized as he got close enough to peer through the windshield: it’s Mom.
Sam’s mom came for her tired, dejected 18-year-old boy. “I figured you could use a ride …” She needn’t say any more than that. Mom just knew.
That image keeps returning to me as I prayed with Luke’s Gospel for these final days leading-up to the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior. There may not be a better way to prepare for Christmas than to reflect on the images and messages contained within Mary’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth.
What strikes me powerfully is the fact that Mary went running – in haste – to stay with her older, also-pregnant relative. Was she running to escape the stares and whispers of a town who knew she was with child and not-yet-married? Was she leaving Nazareth to allow Joseph the God-space he needed to discern what happens next for him … and for them as a family? Was her hasty exit one that speaks to her own heart’s desire to go deeper into that space of hopeful expectation and preparation? Did the God-within-her compel Mary to take time apart in prayer?
Or, could it be, that she ran to that hill country to care for another who needed her? Did teen-aged Mary set-off quickly to in order to enter the life of another who needed her in that moment, much like Sam’s mom did for her son many moons ago?
Maybe in some way, it is a combination of all the above. Life, after all, is rarely a simple, straightforward journey; it’s more like a climb into the hill-country.
Mary, thankfully, was more than willing to travel it. A Mom just knows …
Take that image with you in the days ahead, and hold onto it whenever the path forward doesn’t seem direct or clear … or easy, for that matter. I never tire of praying with Our Lady walking the hill country, especially at times in my life that are challenging and filled with fear.
So removed from that period of time and region of the world, it’s easy to forget how Mary must prayed throughout and processed that time in her life. Yes, she was filled with grace and the presence of Christ, but she also felt with every ounce of her heart the effects of the sin and brokenness, grief and horrors of those whom she encountered along the way to Elizabeth’s.
I imagine Mary having such beautiful conversations with the Christ growing inside her: praying for Elizabeth, Zechariah and their unborn child; offering intercession and love for those whom she passed along the way; and talking to God about us. In that hill-country walk, Mary was also becoming Mother to us all.
She knew then, as she knew at the foot of the Cross – another hill-country journey she had to make – that she would be our Mom, the one always pointing the way for us to find her Son and Savior. That’s why we need to invite Mary along on the journey.
What saddens me for so many of our sisters and brothers living both within the arms of Catholicism as well as those outside her embrace is knowing how little reliance and trust they place within the heart of the Mother of God. Why go to her when you can go directly to Christ?
To which the Church has always made clear: going to her IS going to God. Everything about Mary is reflected back to her Son. She takes none of the honors and accolades for herself; rather, everything from her is for Him and for us to fall in love with Him.
No wonder, then, that she runs in haste to the hill country. She runs in order to bring God to the world, especially in those times and places where roads are rough and ways uncertain. She runs so that the Love growing inside her can meet the love of God growing within us.
I’ll never forget the words of Franciscan Sister Carole Rybicki, a chaplain at Baltimore’s Mercy Hospital who told me on my first day of internship: “You are bringing Christ to those rooms of the sick and dying, the fearful and the angry. That’s most certainly true. But never forget that they are also bringing the same Christ to you. He’s already there with them, and you encounter God-with-us together.”
The God-presence (Holy Spirit) in one blessed soul meeting the God-presence (Spirit) in another, just as Mary and Elizabeth did that day of their encounter. Echoing Elizabeth, “Who am I to encounter God in the loving presence of another?” Joy fills us when such an encounter happens. That shouldn’t just happen once or at Christmas-time only, but every day of our journey through the hill country.
Our Lady knows the road isn’t easy because she herself has travelled it, too. She knows how to help us find and do God’s will. She runs in haste to be with us, for such is a Mother’s Love for her children.
And in all things, as we face those hill hurdles, she tells us: I’m here. I won’t leave you to face it alone. Sometimes, that same love even shows up on a cold December night in an old Chrysler station wagon. A Mom just knows.