Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost; Octoechos Tone 4; 🕂 The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke.
Polyeleos Feast.
Galatians 2:16-20; Colossians 4:5-9, 14, 18; Luke 8:5-15; Luke 10:16-21.
Read Galatians 2:16-20
The Incarnation is the central mystery of our faith. The eternal Son of God assumed a human nature to accomplish human salvation. “For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”
We pause in awe before the profound monumental simplicity of Mary’s “yes” that joined human agency to divine sovereignty in fulfillment of God’s original Creation intention. Mary’s total surrender and acceptance of God’s will came with a foretelling of the further “yeses” she would be called to give as an unfolding of her first one when Simeon said to her, “And a sword will pierce through your own soul also.” She would continue to give that “yes” to God all the way to the foot of the cross.
When Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” he is showing that we too are living that story in the giving of our “yeses” to God. We too will find implicit in them a sword piercing our souls. Even though we cannot realize the full implications until they unfold, when they do, we see that it is to us that Jesus says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” This calls us to be as present and attentive as Mary was to our own “yeses”, pause before them, and take joy in them.