Children of the Light

In today's Gospel from Luke, the Angel Gabriel comes to Mary and tells her she will be the mother of a son, God's son, and Mary, astonished by this fantastical news says "yes" (or more eloquently:  "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word").  This meeting of the Angel Gabriel, the Annunciation, is the first Joyful Mystery of the Rosary.

Since childhood I've been attracted to the Rosary.  It's repetition and meditation on the events of the lives of Jesus and Mary comfort and challenge me.  Often I keep a Rosary in my coat pocket as a reminder to pray.  Sometimes I pray the Rosary, other times short spontaneous prayers, most often intercessions for my family and the world.  Lately my most important prayer of the day has been marking my little ones' foreheads with the sign of the Cross before they leave our mini-van on their way to school.  This sign of light triumphing over darkness, the sign that they belong to Love and the darkness of our world might touch them but it cannot claim them, they are God's.  This is the talisman I send them with out into the world.

And when I said "yes" to becoming a mother, just as Mary did, (though under much less fantastical circumstances.  My angel Gabriel was a home pregnancy test in our little one bedroom apartment).  I said "yes" to the uncertainty of motherhood.  As my children grow older I have less and less control in their lives--the people they meet, the things they learn, the friends they have.   No matter how much I want to I cannot always keep them safe.  But I believe they are children of the Light.

I don't know why bad things happen.  How the horror of 20 young children and 6 adults devoted to their care dying at the hands of a gunman can co-exist with the presence of a God whose very essence is Love.  But I do believe in a God who sent his son as a vulnerable baby into this world of darkness to be our Light.  The light that "shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" (John 1:5).  I claim a God who chose to die on a cross while his mother looked on.    

God has not promised us safety and predictability. God has not promised us ease and an earthly happy ending.  God has promised us Emmanuel, God with us, closer than our very breath in the Light and in the Darkness.  And today all I can give my children is love and hope.  Live as children of the Light.