When my mother was alive, she always had a talent for getting the most out of everything. OK, take the finances for example.
When she came home from shopping, usually the biggest news was the bottom line that was paid at the register. After the groceries were put away, she would take out the receipt and we would look at the amount paid. You know what it was? Half off. I mean, after all the double and triple coupons and the discounts, the final total was half of the original. And that was before the supermarkets came out with the little customer card that allows them to raise the regular prices.
But not only that, of the stuff that wasn’t bought with coupons, the rest was reduced or marked down somehow. What would normally be a hundred dollar shopping bill was about 35 bucks. Meals, house supplies.
Then, there was the clothing. The store of choice? Savers. Perfectly good shoes, dresses, walkers, you name it, for 10, 5, 3 bucks. The nice dress she was buried in was a $3 special from Savers.
She put two kids through college, provided routine care for a dependent daughter for 27 years, cooked all the meals, and ran the whole house on a single-income, working class salary.
She turned little things into great things.
Now, remember when the angel came to the Blessed Virgin Mary? The angel called her by a new name, “Full Of Grace.” What does this name mean?
It means she turns little things into great things.
She gave one single, little yes to God, and turned it into a whole Kingdom that lasts forever. She kept memories of a few short instances of her life, and after pondering them in her heart, she turned them into only one of the most widely prayed prayers in the history of the world, the rosary. And in her hands, her Son, a tiny infant who fit inside an animals’ manger, became the King of the Universe.
And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in grace with God and man. (Lk 2:51-52)
The Lord gives us to His mother, and His mother to us. He wants us to entrust ourselves completely to her, and she wants to give herself entirely to each of us as our mother. Now, He has a very good reason for doing this, He is looking out for us. See, right now we are little, we are not great. We can’t free people on their inside and drive out demons and cure the sick and stand up boldly to hypocrisy. We struggle to forgive the smallest offenses and carry our tiny little crosses. We can’t establish the Church for other people to find their true rest in. We can’t do the things He does like Him.
Yet.
See, but He knows that in His mother’s care, in her hands, we will change. We’ll follow Him, and we’ll become like Him.
When the Lord offers you His mother, trust Him, trust her.
She turns little things into great things.
She is Full Of Grace.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Mt 13:31-32)
ALM 