A talk by Fr. Boniface Hicks: Mercy and the Mother of God

A beautiful talk for the Year of Mercy by Fr. Boniface Hicks, OSB, at the annual pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariapoch, August 14, 2016. Fr. Boniface talks about the "emptiness" of the Mother of God as the way in which she could be filled with grace and mercy and overflow with mercy for others. This is great news for us who are so empty and broken! 

"When we see her greatness, it's not because she does something that's out of reach of us. She does something that every one of us can do: she's empty, she's open, she's earth that God can plant His mercies in. She has a space that she can't fill, and she doesn't try to--that's our danger: we always try to fill that space with something that's in our own control; we have to let that go. We have to allow ourselves to be poor, and weak, and limited, and broken, and then God can fill us like He fills her. 

He shows us precisely what He wants us to be: empty and filled with His love, that we may also become a fount of His mercies, pure earth which pour forth His abundant mercies. What God shows us in our Lady is precisely what He is making us into: not a porcelain statue distant from us and unachievable, but something that's more like falling than like flying...something that looks more like dying than like rising. Our job is to die, His job is to raise us up again, and that's what our Lady demonstrates for us in her Dormition...."