Thursday of the Fourth Week of Advent
For whatever reason or perhaps for no reason at all, I find that I always have a song going in my head. It’s like the background music to my life minus the earbuds. So, when our youngest daughter, Anna, wants to bug me a bit, all she has to do is start singing the theme song from the musical, Annie. You know the one: “The sun’ll come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, they’ll be sun . . . “
One reason I find that song so annoying is that the lyrics are just too hopelessly optimistic for me. And I say that not just because I live in Dayton, Ohio where twelve of the next fourteen days are forecast to be very grey. The idea that when someone is having a bad day all they have to do is “stick out [their] chin and grin and say . . . tomorrow“ and a better day will be on the way—just seems ridiculously simplistic and, thus, sure to disappoint.
The other reason I find that song so annoying is that once I get it in my head, it is very hard to get it out. It “plays” on continuous loop, sometimes for days. And it drives me nuts.
Thanks to Father Satish and his retreat on St. John of the Cross and the contemplative life earlier this month, I have had a very different song on my internal music loop lately. During that retreat, Father Satish talked about Mary as a contemplative, like St. John of the Cross. And by that I believe he meant that she was someone who sought to empty herself into God and bring her soul into unity with God.
In the course of the retreat, Father led us in singing The Magnificat. We were able to sing it, rather than just read Mary’s prayer, because Father Satish had put it to music. And the melody that he wrote is so beautiful that when it’s not on automatic continuous loop in my head (as it pretty much has been since the retreat), I find myself purposefully returning to it.
I cherish this gift from Father Satish because, by putting Mary’s prayer into song, he has made it possible for me to have Mary’s prayer with me no matter where I am or what I am doing. I don’t have the whole song in my head yet. But I know that each time we sing it at IC, a bit more of Mary’s prayer will stay with me.
Unlike the theme song for Annie, Mary’s prayer is not optimistic. And it doesn’t provide simplistic answers that are sure to disappoint. Instead, it tells the truth about us. That we suffer—we are hungry, we are lowly. That we bring suffering on others, perhaps, because we are proud, mighty, and/or rich. And it tells us who God is (and if anyone—besides Jesus—can tell us who God is, it has to be the Mother of God).
In her prayer, she tells us that God pays attention to who is proud, who is rich, who is lowly, who is hungry. More than that, her prayer tells us that God is on the side of the lowly and the hungry and all those who we human beings make suffer. She also reminds us that God is good on promises.
The sun may not come out tomorrow. I don’t have to look at my NOAA app to know that the chances of sunshine tomorrow are probably slim. Okay, I just looked at my app. As of this writing, we are looking at not just cloudy skies for tomorrow but also a high of a whopping 8 degrees, wind, and snow showers.
But while the sun may not, in fact, come out tomorrow (or the day after or the day after that), God is here. God is always here. And God is paying attention. Emmanuel, amen.