Cooperating with Grace Like Mary

Have you ever met someone that you took a liking to instantly? At that moment you felt “this is it”- a fulfillment of a dream or an ideal image. In “ The Woman I love “, Fulton Sheen explains that all of us have a blueprint of the person we love, shaped by our experiences, thinking habits and desires.

In the same way, God has a blueprint of all of us including Mary, “only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His Own Mother” (F. Sheen).

Mary was a perfect fit for the blueprint because Mary freely cooperated with God. She abandoned her will for the will of God. Mary cooperated with God in the task she was assigned.

Pope Benedict XVI explains that Mary’s prayer of the Magnificat is a spirit-filled prayer that praises the living God. She was assigned a task and today the church does what she did – bringing Christ to the world (Lk1:39-56).

Mary was intimately connected to God and thus she was filled with grace. Pope Benedict explains that “Grace in the proper and deepest sense of the word is not something that comes from God; it is God himself.” Her life was transparent that she was the perfect ‘ark’ for him.

We are all God’s blueprint too- carefully designed but “we are who we are and not yet what we ought to be” – there is no perfect conformity. We are also assigned tasks but we do not cooperate with grace- we refuse to surrender our will and be moulded into the persons we ought to be. Hence, we fall short of what God wants us to be.

How do we cooperate with grace? Mary shows us the way- she prayed, was humble and entrusted herself to God.

“Mary did not autonomously conduct her life: she waits for God to take the reins of her path and guide her where He wants. She is docile, and with her availability she prepares the grand events in which God takes part in the world.” (Pope Francis)

Pope Francis tells us that if we pray like Mary and entrust ourselves in God’s hands, we will become instruments of grace. We will understand that each day is a call to cooperate with grace and we will not complain or be upset when our days are filled with problems but rather offer each situation as a humble love offering.

Pray like Mary and entrust your life in God’s hands- ‘Lord, what You want, when You want, and how You want’. (Pope Francis)