Pints With Aquinas - It's MARY's Birthday! Praise the LORD! | Mthr Natalia

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

Mother talks about the infinite nature of God's love though the lens of Mary's birth answering the prayers of Anne and Joachim, but also being necessary for Christ to come. 🤝 💸 Support the Channel: https://mattfradd.locals.com 🎧 Mother's Podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕  Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas. Today we celebrate the Nativity of the Theotokos, the birth of the Mother of God. And I believe this is celebrated in the West today as well. And I have just a couple of very simple thoughts

that I wanted to share about the feast as I was praying about it this morning. One is from part of our prayers for the feast today and then one is a little bit of a reflection on the feast that we have tomorrow. So today at Matins, at morning prayer, we have this prayer. At your nativity today, O undefiled maiden, Eve is loosed from her condemnation.

Adam is also freed from the ancient curse and he sings, through you we have been delivered from corruption Eve is loose from her condemnation Adam is also freed from the ancient curse so as a note there there's some artistic license I guess that the church takes here in our hymnography of kind of the flow of things, right, is the church is not saying that specifically it's because of the birth of Mary that Adam and Eve are freed, or that the rest of us are freed. The church very much teaches that all of this comes through the redemption that Christ brings.

But the point here, right, is that in Mary's birth, this will lead to all of the other things, as in Mary conceiving by the Holy Spirit, and then giving birth to Jesus, and then raising Jesus, and then Jesus' death and resurrection and all of that. So the church is not saying that Mary is our savior or anything like that. I wanna be very, very clear.

But the simple thought that I had about this prayer is that Mary came as an answer to the prayers of Joachim and Anna, which I'll talk about in the second part of this. But the birth of Mary was not only a gift to Joachim and Anna, right? She ends up being, of course, the gift to the entire church, to the entire world.

And I think that this is a simple truth that we can often forget in our own spiritual life, which is that the good that God works for one, He works for all. God is never working good for one person to the detriment of someone else. You know, I was thinking this recently because I told someone that I was praying for them,

someone who's suffering, and they said, well, don't pray for me, pray for so-and-so, they need the prayers more. for them, someone who's suffering, and they said, well don't pray for me, pray for so-and-so, they need the prayers more. And that's actually a response that I've heard fairly frequently when amongst like devoted Christians, and it always strikes this place in me of, do you think that God only has so much good that he can give or something? Because that's what it sounds like.

It's like, well, if you waste your prayers on me, then someone else isn't getting those prayers. But really we can pray for everybody and everybody needs prayers. So that's part of it. But also you know even in things and I think I talked about this probably on my episode about discernment. When someone's discerning a vocation with a community, I'm never having to ask myself as the vocation director. I'm never having to ask, well, what's good for the person and what's good for the community

and we need to weigh those against each other. What's good for the person is what's good for the community. It might be painful to the person or to the community, but for something to be painful doesn't mean that it's not good. So anyways, I just was struck by that in this prayer, that God worked this good for Joachim and Anna, but he worked this good for the entire human race

and for all of creation, really. And again, Mary is an extreme example of that, but that's very true of all of our prayers and all of the good that God works in our lives. The second reflection was about, like I said, tomorrow's feast. So we have this common tradition in the Byzantine rite

of this common tradition in the Byzantine rite that we will, after a major feast, the next day, we'll celebrate the kind of other main participants in that feast. So for instance, on January 6th, the Theophany, where we celebrate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. The next day we celebrate John the Baptist, since he was the one who baptized Jesus. So today we celebrate the birth of the mother of God,

but tomorrow we celebrate Saints Joachim and Anna, since they were the other main participants in this feast. And so I looked ahead at those prayers, the prayers for tomorrow, and also read the prologue entry, the prologue is Our Lives of the Saints. And two things really stood out to me, again, both very simple, about Joachim and Anna. Two things really stood out to me, again, both very simple about Joachim and Anna.

So Joachim and Anna were, as seen in the tradition, struggling with barrenness. And they were of an older age, just like Abraham and Sarah, and they cried out to God for him to release them of their barrenness, to have a child. And they promised, if you give us a child, we will dedicate him or her to your service. We'll give them back to you, basically.

service. We'll give them back to you basically. And when they then conceive and have Mary, everything that we sing about them and everything that we we say in our traditions is that they were just so full of joy at the Lord having answered their prayers. And there's just this overwhelming sense of gratitude. And it's easy for us to look at that and say, well, of course they would be grateful. They gave birth to the mother of God. Did they know that? But also, I think it's easy to look at their situation

and say, well, yes, of course they're grateful and they should be. And it's very easy for us to look at other people in general and say they should be grateful for this gift. But I know in my own life, that gratitude when I'm given the thing that I asked for, isn't always actually the response that I give. It's often not actually the response that I feel.

I mean, imagine Joachim and Anna in this time in which, in this day and age in which barrenness is seen as a curse, as a sign of disfavor from God. And of everything we know of them, they were holy people and certainly not disfavored, but they're living in this time and they're also living in a time in which really it's not super helpful to have daughters.

And so I think that it's easy to imagine, for me anyways, a couple who's older and who's begging God for a child, and then in this day and age, and he finally gives them a child. I could imagine the response being, seriously, not a boy? This is the only child I'm ever gonna have, God,

and you gave me one that's not going to be able to carry on my name and carry on the family line and and isn't actually going to be able to care for me when they're older and all of these things. But there was just none of that in Joachim and Anna, at least not from anything that we sing about or pray about in our tradition, there was just pure gratitude. And I just can easily call to mind so many times in my life that I've been given what I've asked for, but it's very easy for me to see the things about it that I don't appreciate or how it could have been better and to just tend towards that negativity.

And I think fostering this spirit of gratitude is really important in our lives. Part of my rule of prayer every day that was given to me by my spiritual father is to just spend time thanking God. And sometimes there's a more concerted effort in that And sometimes there's a more concerted effort in that when my life doesn't feel like it's going as well.

But I think that concerted effort is really important and it can help to shift our view and the things that we're seeing and the way that we're seeing God at work in our lives. And then the second part was just the fact that again again in the tradition, so we have in November the feast of the entrance of the Theotokos into the temple and in both East and West. And what this means is that Joachim and Anna stayed faithful to their promise, to their oath. When they said to the Lord, if you give us this,

then we will give this child back to you. We will dedicate him or her to service to you. And again, I think it was so often in my own life that I will go to God in a time of great need, in a time of despair, in a time of heartache. And then once he's given me the consolation that I've asked for, or once things seem to have worked out in my favor,

it's really easy to just forget the promises that I've made to him and to think, oh, I'll do that tomorrow or so on and so forth. And so I'm just really moved by St. Joachim and St. Anna and their fidelity to their promise to the Lord. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of this day. Thank you for all of the gifts that you've given me and that you've given to our listeners. And most particularly, I thank you for the gifts

that we don't see, that we don't recognize. Please grant us a deeper awareness of those gifts that we may give glory to you and be a witness to others of your fidelity. Thank you for the examples that you give us in the Theotokos in Joachim and Anna. Examples of fidelity, of gratefulness, of goodness, help us to emulate all that is good in them to keep our minds and our hearts focused on you.

I ask all of this and thank you for these things through the intercession of Saint Nathaniel, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Joachim and Anna, the Most Holy Theotokos and all the saints and through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.