When the famous American preacher, the Reverend Doctor Billy Graham,
was 80 years old and Parkinson’s disease was first beginning to
exhibit its debilitating effects, leaders from Dr. Graham’s hometown
of Charlotte, North Carolina, invited their favorite native-born son
to a luncheon in his honor. Dr. Graham hesitated in accepting the
invitation initially because of his struggles with the disease.
But, leaders of the City of Charlotte insisted, “We don’t expect a
major address. Just come and let us honor you.” So, Dr. Graham
agreed to travel to his hometown.
After hearing all of the many wonderful things the speakers had to
say about him, Dr. Graham stepped up to the rostrum, looked at the
crowd, and said, “I’m reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great
physicist who this month has been honored by Time magazine as
the ‘Man of the Century.’” Then Dr. Graham began to tell the tale
of a train trip the aging, Noble Prize winning physicist was making
from Princeton, New Jersey. After the train left the station, the
conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every
passenger. When he came to Albert Einstein, the world-renowned
physicist reached into his vest pocket but he couldn’t find his
ticket. So Einstein reached into the pockets of his trousers.
The ticket wasn’t there either, so Einstein began foraging through
his briefcase, but he still couldn’t find the ticket. Albert
Einstein then checked the seat beside him. He still couldn’t find
his ticket.
The conductor said, “Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know
who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket. Don’t
worry about it.”
Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued down
the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next
car, the conductor turned around and saw the great physicist down on
his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket. The
conductor rushed back and said, “Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, I told
you ‘Don’t worry, I know who you are. No problem. You don’t
need a ticket. I’m sure you bought one’.”
Einstein looked up at the conductor and said, “Young man, I too,
know who I am. What I don’t know is where I’m going.”
Having told that story, Dr. Graham continued, “See the suit I’m
wearing? It’s a brand new suit. My children and my grandchildren
are telling me I’ve gotten a little slovenly in my old age. I used
to be a bit more fastidious. So I went out and bought a new suit
for this luncheon and one more occasion. You know what that
occasion is? This is the suit in which I’m going to be buried. But
when you hear I’m dead, I don’t want you to remember the suit I’m
wearing. I want you to remember this: “I not only know who I
am...but I also know where I’m going.”
Although both men—one
a world-renowned physicist and the other a world-renowned preacher—knew
who they were, the former had no idea where he was going while
latter knew exactly where he was going.
Contrary to what many believe, Albert Einstein was no atheist. In
fact, he once wrote: “To know that what is impenetrable to us really
exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most
radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the
most primitive form, this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center
of all religion.” The physicist went on to say that a person who
does not experience the mysterious “might as well be dead,” noting,
“My religion consists of the humble admiration of the illimitable
superior spirit, who reveals himself in the slight details we are
able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.”
Then, when interviewed
for an issue of the Saturday Evening Post in 1929 and asked
what he thought about Jesus Christ, Einstein responded, “I am
enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read
the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His
personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such
life....”
There is no doubt that Albert Einstein was acutely sensitive to the
mysterious—to the spiritual—but for some unknown reason, he could
not, would not, and did not embrace God’s mysterious presence in his
life by making an act of faith. Neither did Einstein allow
God’s mysterious presence to transform his consciousness to see the
God who created all that Einstein’s brilliant mind was able to
grasp. The physicist experienced the stirrings of faith but, in so
far as his biographers know, Einstein was never able to allow those
stirrings to become an act of faith that, in turn, could transform
his consciousness so that Einstein could perceive God’s presence
alive and active in his life. As a result, Albert Einstein
knew who he was. But, spiritually speaking, the world-renowned
physicist didn’t
know where he was going.
Today’s Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, turns the tables not
on Albert Einstein but on us. We are believers who are sensitive to
the mysterious—to the spiritual, as Albert Einstein was. But,
unlike the Nobel laureate, we have made an act of faith evidencing
itself today because, after all, we are here in church today while
most of our fellow co-religionists are relaxing comfortably in their
homes thinking about the holiday parades, bowl games, and chowing
down all of that snack food! As good as that act of faith is,
however, the important question today’s solemnity asks us is: Have
we allowed our sensitivity to the mysterious and act of faith to
transform our consciousness so that we see God’s presence in our
daily lives?
We have just celebrated the great solemnity of the Incarnation—not a
social and political invention like the so-called “Winter
Celebration,” “Festivus,” or “Kwanza”—where, as St. Athanasius said,
“God became human in order that humans might become like God” (in
Greek,
qhwsis). As we
contemplate that mystery—the mystery of the God who became human—the
mystery of the God’s
unending and
undiminishing love for us made incarnate in Jesus Christ—we recall
today that it was Mary—the
Mother of God—who made the
Incarnation possible. Her faith—not just a sensitivity to the
mysterious (like Einstein and us) or an act of faith (like us but
not like Einstein) but also a willingness to allow faith to
transform her consciousness—enabled her to say, “Let it be done unto
me according to Your will.” This is what today’s
challenges us to consider.
Mary is the model—the paradigm, if you will—of what it means to be a
person of faith. Mary knew who she was, not only through her
sensitivity to the divine and making an act of faith but also
through her willingness to allow her faith to transform her
consciousness so that Mary recognized God’s presence alive and
active in all of those very mysterious situations that God thrust
upon Mary at various points in her life. These included
worrisome events including the Annunciation and the Visitation.
These also included gruesome and pain-filled events like the
Crucifixion and burial of her son, Jesus. When the angel told
Mary she would conceive, she believed and accepted God’s will. When
an angel told her husband, Joseph, to take his family to Egypt, Mary
believed and accepted God’s will. They were also meticulously
careful about keeping Jewish observance. They made pilgrimages to
Jerusalem for the yearly feasts. They offered the prescribed
sacrifices, etc., including having Jesus circumcised according to
the law and giving him the name prescribed by the angel Gabriel in
the vision.
It is in this sense that Mary lived her faith as she saws seeing
God’s presence in the events of her life.
More important than these acts of faith—similar to us coming to
church today—Mary allowed her faith to transform her consciousness.
In all of the events surrounding the conception, birth, life, and
death of God’s only begotten Son, Mary sought to discover the divine
meaning and purpose behind every joy and sorrow, every word and
gesture. Don’t
forget that
Mary
accompanied her son to Jerusalem and then to Calvary and assisted in
interring his body in the tomb. The Mother of God
listened for, heard, believed, and observed God’s presence in
everything—the ordinary as well as the extraordinary. We heard this
in today’s Gospel passage when St. Luke reminds us: “Mary kept all
these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2: 19).
Unlike Albert Einstein and perhaps some of us at various times in
our lives, Mary’s faith provided her a spiritual compass that
enabled Mary to know exactly where she was going in terms of
direction, although Mary clearly was uncertain about how events
would unfold. Confronted with the troubling and worrisome as well
as the gruesome and painful, Mary did not wonder why God had
abandoned her but, instead, did something that Einstein found
himself incapable of doing and what today’s
solemnity challenges us to do,
namely, to trust in Divine Providence—God’s guiding purpose—as the
uncertainties of fate and fortune unfolded in Mary’s life and as
they unfold in our lives as well.
Don’t think for one minute that Mary was absolutely confident and
understanding of what these mysterious events meant as they unfolded
in her life. Instead, St. Luke reminds us that Mary “pieced them
together” (in Greek,
sumballousa)
in her heart, discovering little by little the great mystery God was
revealing to her. This mystery—Mary’s divine Motherhood—is
certainly far from easy to understand using the human mind alone.
This is what Mary the Mother of God has to teach us today. We
need to understand with our hearts what our eyes and minds are
incapable of perceiving or understanding on their own.
Sensitivity to the mysterious and making an act of faith can aid us
to accept God’s mysterious presence in our lives. But, like
Mary, we will not entirely grasp God’s will—Divine
Providence—until
we ponder all of these things in the heart by piecing together and
discovering what God is revealing to us in every aspect of our human
experience. Then, by following Mary’s example, we can our allow our
sensitivity to the mysterious and our act of faith to be transformed
by God’s
presence alive and active in our
lives.
While Albert Einstein was sensitive to the mystery of God, he
succumbed to the temptation of discouragement and doubt when
struggling with mystery. Sadly, this kept the great physicist from
ever making an act of faith that we know of and thus, Einstein was
never transformed into an awareness of God’s mysterious presence
and, although Einstein knew who he was, he didn’t
have a spiritual compass to discern where he
was going, spiritually speaking. This solemnity of Mary, Mother of
God which we celebrate each New Year’s day reminds us to be
confident, like Mary, in seeking to move beyond being sensitive to
the mysterious and making an act of faith—evident by our presence
here today—and to advance in that
“knowledge
of the heart”
where we piece together those mysterious events where God manifests
His presence in every aspect of our daily lives. This is where God
makes His face shine upon us; this is how God is gracious to us;
and, this is how God blesses us (Numbers 6:24-27).
Contemplating these things in our hearts and growing in
the
knowledge of the heart,
all of those temptations, difficulties, and trials we encounter each
day will not lead us to discouragement and doubt, as they did for
Albert Einstein. Instead, these will become moments wherein we will
experience God’s presence in our lives and, like Mary, as we keep
all these things and reflect on them in our hearts, we will know not
only who we are—God’s beloved children—but will also know, like Mary
and the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham, where we are going—God
is leading us to His kingdom.
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