On the way to Mass this morning, I had something on the radio, not sure what the program was, one voice, of several, I recognized as Scott Hahn. (They were having one of those "discussions" where everyone seems to already know what everyone else has thought of, and thoroughly agrees with it - more like a multi-voice lecture than anything else.)
They were discussing the "story" of the Nativity, and mentioned that the Hero, being a baby, is pretty passive, and it made me question: if we do approach the birth of Christ as a story, a drama, is He the hero of it?
Isn't the Blessed Mother? It is her fiat that sets the story in motion, or at least the part of the story that is open to human perception, the part that occurs in time and space and history, instead of unchangingly out of time and space and history.
And this girl alone is there from the beginning, from the angel's shocking announcement.
It is her willingness to make the journeys, some literal, some metaphorical; her willingness to suffer, a sword piercing her heart, as Simeon was to prophesy, for what for she alone of all human creatures bears no responsibility; her willingness to take on the appearance of transgressive behavior for which the punishment is death; her willingness to trust in the Lord with no assurances of how it all will end except that it is what He wills...
The small, seemingly insignificant character; essentially powerless, an onlooker might suppose; destined to be a supporting player at best in a story that would be of interest to anyone else... on whose shoulders the fate of all the earth rests?
Doesn't that pretty much describe both Blessed Mary Ever Virgin and the little hobbit?
Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...
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