Sometimes we can think of ourselves as insignificant compared to the vastness of the universe. The Feast of the Birthday of Mary shows that God knows, loves, and has a purpose for each of us. Fr Richard reflects on today’s readings from Mass.
Readings for the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary can be found here.
In his rather zany series of novels comprising the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams imagines a machine called the Total Perspective Vortex. This shows you the whole universe, and your own place within it. The result for most people is rather terrifying. They suddenly come face to face with the immensity of the universe, with its billions of stars and galaxies, and then realise how tiny and insignificant they are. One infinitesimally small individual on a tiny speck of a planet. Maybe we sometimes have that feeling ourselves. Where do I fit into the great scheme of things? Does my life really matter? How can I possibly make a difference?
In the Hitch Hiker’s Guide, coming face to face with these questions often drove people mad. Happily for us as Christians, we need not adopt such a drastic response. Indeed, today’s feast, the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and its readings, offers a wonderfully hopeful perspective on the question of our place in the universe. In the passage from Romans, Paul talks about those whom God foreknew, predestined, and called. So God, the creator of that vast universe which can so disconcert us, knew and called individual people even from before they were born. This mighty creator not only has a relationship with his people, he also has a purpose for them. Today especially we think about this in relation to Mary – she was foreknown, predestined and called from before her birth. Yet it is surely also true for each and every one of us.
This theme is developed in the Gospel reading. The long and complicated genealogy which Matthew gives us shows how God’s purposes, culminating in the lives of the Holy Family, were worked out long ago. When Mary was born she would have seemed for all the world to be as insignificant as someone who experienced the Total Perspective Vortex. Yet we know that God had a wonderful purpose in store for her. The same is true for each one of us. On this great feast, let us seek to understand that purpose and, like Mary, fulfil with joy.
Mass today is in St Mary’s at 6.30pm.
South Cardiff Ministry Area 