A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Of course, we take up the narrative right after the annunciation. Mary set out, that is from the northern country, proceeding in haste into the hill country to a town of Judah, that's the Extreme South, where she entered Zacharias' house and greeted her her cousin Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby stirred in her womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out in a loud voice, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
But who am I that the mother of my lord should come to me? The moment that your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby stirred in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who trusted that the lord's words to her would be fulfilled. And then Mary said, this is the magnificat, of course, my being proclaims the greatness of the lord. My spirit finds joy in god, my savior, for he has looked upon his servant in her lowliness.
All ages to come shall call me blessed. God who is mighty has done great things for me. Holy is his name. His mercy is from age to age on those who fear him. He has shown might with his arm.
He has confused the proud in their inmost thoughts. He has deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places. The hungry, he has given every good thing, while the rich, he has set away empty. He has upheld Israel, his servant, ever mindful of his mercy, even as he promised our fathers, promised Abraham and his descendants forever. Mary remained with her cousin Elizabeth about three months, and then she returned home up to the lake country.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Yesterday, we had the faith a feast of Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, k o l b e, the famous Polish priest who in 1942 took the place at his own volition of another man condemned to be starved to death in the prison of Auschwitz.
And he was he died, of course, after about two weeks. As a matter of fact, they had to kill him. And he was canonized by our holy father in 1982. Colby is his name. The point I want to make is this, long before he ever got to Auschwitz, Colby was a well known, notable person.
He had among other things established what he called Maryvilles, villages dedicated to our lady, in Poland, in Brazil, in Japan, and even in Illinois, USA. He was a very notable figure, a most energetic priest of Franciscan. That's why he was slapped into Auschwitz. And this man took the place of a totally unknown man who incidentally was present at his canonization and was put on Time Magazine embracing our holy father. Now the one point I wanna make is this this morning, is the lifelong dedication of Colby to our blessed lady.
It was his overriding devotion. It fired his every religious act. And here was a man who from his boyhood was plagued with tuberculosis, who very seldom had the full support of his superiors, who most of the time worked against tremendous odds, and yet he was on fire with his love of our blessed lady, and accomplished enormous deeds, establishments. Enormous, and they still survive. Now, we today are not thinking enough of our blessed mother.
It's considered, you know, low brow. We are more superior Christians. We go direct to God. We don't need a lot of intermediaries, you know. We have that high flown religion where we simply don't need these helps.
This is a fact. And, of course, even they were told that the Vatican II did not emphasize devotion to Mary. That's very true. It didn't emphasize devotion to a lot of things. So what?
But we can't afford to pass our blessed mother over. She's a reality. She's the mother of God. Think what that means, the mother of God. Today, we're all held bound and bent on all kinds of moral issues, and rightly so.
But remember, in the fourth and the fifth centuries, the great question was, who is Mary? And when she was proclaimed theotokos, the mother of God, there was jubilation and celebration. Those people were thinking. We prefer to act without thinking. The feast of the assumption was only declared, infallibly so, in 1950, Papyrus the twelfth.
But you see, even good, sincere, intelligent Lutheran theologians said it's a perfectly valid conclusion implicit in her immaculate conception. Of course, she was without sin. Therefore, why should she pay the penalty for sin? She should not, ergo, she didn't. And so, Pius the twelfth defined this doctrine that the blessed mother was taken to heaven, body and soul complete.
One thing we ought to get out of this is that Mary is one of us. She is absolutely human without sin, immaculate conception. But she's one of us. We go to her. After all, the first miracle of Jesus Christ was at her behest at the marriage feast of Canaan.
She is one of us in our lives. Have you ever thought very calmly and objectively what that Feast of the Annunciation means? That a virgin Jewish girl is going told she's going to be a mother? Do you know that that put her in a legal position of being stoned to death? You talk about trials of life.
Do you realize what a a a journey on foot meant going from Galilee the the Lake Of Galilee and Nazareth in the North all the way down to the South in Judea and going back again on foot? A a a girl? A young woman? Do you realize what acts of faith that girl made? She couldn't how could she understand what was happening if she was going to be the mother of God?
But she said, look, I submit. Thy will be done. But remember, she also said, how can this happen to me? Thank goodness she said that, because that's the proof in a nutshell that she wasn't a crazy lunatic. When she went down and saw her cousin who was sterile, who was in up in years along with her husband, already pregnant with a baby, that was pretty good motives of credibility in anybody's book, in any court of law.
Now I want to come back to this idea that Mary is one of us doing her job as God calls her to do it. Not as she would like to do it, not for her self fulfillment as we say today, not because it makes me comfortable, not because it makes me happy, certainly not because it's fun. She did it because god was calling her. That's where we stand. We stand in her footsteps, and she's beside us.
Not in some unrealistic world, but in the world in which you find yourself today, today. And with that, I conclude with a prayer of Saint Maximilian Maria Colby. Her feast was yesterday, and I just don't know how it worked out, but I don't think it's a just an absolute coincidence that his feast is on the fourteenth preceding the assumption of our blessed lady. Here's what quote one of his prayers. Let everyone strive not so much to change the atmosphere as to perfect himself.
Let each one of us come closer to the immaculate one, and then we will come closer to one another. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.