It seems so strange in the Easter season, when we’re still dealing with the wonder of the resurrection with its consolations and challenges, that the risen Christ gives us to suddenly be taken back to the Annunciation where Mary’s “yes” started the whole story. I’m intrigued, in my own reflection, by Mary’s trust, which does seem entirely appropriate for the Easter season. In the readings around this feast, we are told of how bravely the previously cowardly disciples preach the risen Jesus. They learned through the resurrection to trust that God ultimately would be victorious by defeating even death itself. Yet Mary’s trust is even more stunning to me. She trusted God before she ever heard or saw Jesus. She must have trusted what she had been told at the Annunciation and by others in Jesus’ infancy all through the first 30 years of her son’s life when he presumably seemed just like any other boy becoming a man in Galilee.
I had a superior when I was studying philosophy who told me during a retreat once that if I didn’t trust, then I wouldn’t be able to hope. The two are linked. My own ability to trust God waxes and wanes depending on circumstances, but I must have gotten better because I do have hope in the Church and the Jesuits. I sometimes pray to Mary to help me be more trusting like she was. Perhaps you can spend some time in your prayer today asking God to increase your trust in his love for you and the world he created. He loves both deeply.
—Fr. James Prehn, S.J., Vocations Director for the Chicago-Detroit Province Jesuits. For more information on Jesuit vocations, click here