Sister Mary Dunning shared this reflection at liturgy for today's feast based on Luke 1:39-56.
Today's gospel is filled with impossibilities. Two obscure women meet in a remote village of a conquered, humiliated land. Mary and Elizabeth are Palestinian Jews, citizens of a land crushed under decades of the imperial power of Rome. Before Mary even speaks, Elizabeth intuitively knows that she is in the presence of God and cries out in wonder, "How does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" The two women embrace, pour blessings upon each other and with joy and astonishment, sing in loud voices of the great things God has done for them.
Both women in this visitation are prophets and both are evangelists gleefully sharing the good news. Both women are pregnant with new life; both bear sons who will be killed at what would seem to be the time of their greatest success. Yet Mary sings of the mighty being routed from their thrones, the lowly being raised up, the hungry being satisfied and the rich being sent empty away.
Mary's Magnificat has been called the most subversive text in scripture. It is said that the Czars of Russia, who were very "religious" people, were terrified of this prayer. Why? Because it is an alternative reality that Mary proclaims, a vision of the reign of God. Mary is announcing the entry of God into human history, God taking on human flesh, becoming incarnate in the child in her womb. This vision did not come to Mary in one blinding flash of insight. Rather it was the fruit of time spent in prayer, in listening to the Spirit of God, in "keeping the vigil of mystery."
This month we celebrated the 147th anniversary of our foundation as a religious congregation. Our profession of vows as consecrated women witnesses to our desire to give our lives utterly to God, to our longing to join in Mary's unqualified "Yes" to God's desire to do great things for us and through us. We want to see as God sees, to make God's vision our own. We want to be contemplatives who listen to the word of God and act to enflesh that word. We yearn to proclaim the reign of God through lives dedicated to justice.
We are gathered in this chapel named for our patron, Our Lady of the Rosary, to remember with reverence the lowly handmaid whom all generations have called blessed. And we express our gratitude anew to the God in our midst who has for 147 years looked with tender mercy upon the lowliness of the women of Sparkill and enabled us to be and to do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine.
– Sister Mary Dunning, OP
After ministering in education, congregational leadership, and senior housing, Sister Mary recorded the most recent account of congregational history.