The Blessed Mother

 

In the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henry Ossawa Tanner’s oil painting of The Annunciation is housed.  You see it above and you can go to the museum website.    It is a beautiful, powerful and provocative painting.  You will “… see a teenage girl, dressed in peasant robes, sitting on a rumpled bed in a room with bumpy, cobblestone floor.  She seems afraid and awed.”  [Philadelphia Museum of Art – website]

Mary wisely listened to God and did what God asked of her even though it was difficult. 

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote this about The Blessed Mother.

"[Mary] does not remain locked in her initial troubled state at the proximity of God in his angel, but she seeks to understand. So, Mary appears as a fearless woman, one who remains composed even in the presence of something utterly unprecedented.

At the same time, she stands before us as a woman of great interiority, who holds heart and mind in harmony and seeks to understand the context, the overall significance of God’s message.

In this way, she becomes an image of the Church as she considers the word of God, tries to understand it in its entirety and guards in her memory the things that have been given to her."  [Pope Benedict XVI, p. 33 Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narrative] 

May our Golden Rule be to follow Mary's example by following God's will, while seeking to understand it.

 

St. Joseph pray for us. 

St. Andre Bessette intercede for us. 

May God Be Praised.