A Homily by The Rev. Canon Mark Kowalewski, Canon for Formation, Theology and Deployment of the Diocese of Los Angeles, given at St. Mary in Palms, August 17, 2003

"My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior." We remember these words today as Mary's words given to us in Luke's Gospel, words that today reach out to us through the ages, words that we now believe Mary sings throughout eternity in the life she shares with all the saints who have gone before us.

Remember that these are words of rejoicing in a decision already made, a YES to God. At the same time let's remember the events just before Mary proclaims these words in Luke's Gospel. Let's look at that moment just before Mary makes her choice.

There is a wonderful sermon written by Bernard of Clairvaux about this moment in the story -- the moment before Mary utters her yes to God. Remember that Mary, a young girl, hears the message of the angel asking her if she is willing to take her role in God's plan for the salvation of the world. Will she say yes to the choice God asks her to make? St. Bernard takes us to that moment of silence:

"You have heard O Virgin the announcement of a great mystery. The angel is waiting for your answer: it is time for him to return to the one who sent him. And we too are waiting, O Lady, for this word of mercy, we who are overwhelmed by misery under sentence of condemnation. By one small word of yours in answer we shall be restored and brought back to life. Adam asks this of you, O loving virgin, poor Adam, exiled from paradise with all his poor children. The whole world is waiting, kneeling at your feet. And rightly so, for on your lips hangs the comfort of the afflicted, the redemption of captives, the deliverance of the damned; in a word, the salvation of all the sons and daughters of Adam, your entire race."

When I read these wonderfully poetic words I can't help in my mind to add a little less poetically -- Now Mary, I don't want you to feel any pressure! Of course, St. Bernard, writes after the fact. We know how the story will end. But if we really think of that moment, we know that Mary's YES also implies a NO. Mary's yes implies a choice in her ability to say no to God, but it also implies that in saying yes, she says no to other choices in her life.

Can you think of the dreams that a teenage girl might have of her life? Did she dream of her wedding day? Did she think of the life she might have? Did she have dreams for her future? She already had plans to marry her fiancee; did she dream of the children they would have? Did she think about who they might be? In this moment, in this silence before she says yes, Mary has also to say no. No to the life she may have dreamed she would have in order to say yes to what she is being asked to do. From this moment her life will never be the same as she or anyone else had planned.

As I prepared my words for this morning I came across a passage from Stephen Carter's novel "The Emperor of Ocean Park." The narrator, Talcott Garland, delivers a eulogy for an old family friend Theo Mountain, and dissolves into tears before he finishes. "I suppose people think I was crying over Theo," he writes. "Maybe I was, a little. But, mainly, I was crying over all the good things that will never be again, and the way the Lord, when you least expect it, forces you to grow up."

Maybe in her moment of decision there are tears in Mary's eyes, tears of mourning over dreams that will never be realized, tears over the fact that the Lord, when, you least expect it, forces you to grow up. Mary's yes is costly. Mary's yes is also a no, a no to a quiet and respectable life, a life in which there may have been a certain amount of predictability. What she has known will never be again. Mary says yes to an unknown future, placing herself in the hands of God. There is no crystal ball, no assured outcome just a question and the wait for an answer.

Mary's word is yes. Mary falls into the arms of God's unknown future knowing only that God is asking her to follow. Mary says no to her own hopes and dreams that she has envisioned and yes to a new dream, a new life that God has in store.

I can resonate with the experience of saying yes to someone or something and at the same time saying no to all the other choices we did not make. I think that insight about the significance of those choices comes to us only through hindsight. We can reflect on the dreams we had of who we would be or become when we were children and we think perhaps how unrealistic those dreams were. Or we think of the choices we made at forks in the road and the paths that we took that led us to where we are and who we are now. When I was in my early twenties, in Buffalo, New York, after having finished college and I was wondering what would be next. A friend of mine was moving to California for a job and I decided to go with him. I didn't know for how long or what I would do, I just knew I needed to go. As I look back on that decision now and how that decision led me to graduate school and ultimately to the priesthood I can see the hand of providence at work in my saying yes to that journey. That small inkling to go on an adventure made all the difference in my life, but was vastly different than the life I thought I might have. The Lord, when you least expect it, forces you to grow up, to leave the security of the comfort zone and take a risk.

There are other times we may have said yes to something or no to another that may result in tears because we mourn the road not taken. We may regret the choices we made that have led us down blind alleys or to a place in life we wish we never came. And yet, even in those choices God can redeem us with God's yes to us. Even when we are in a moment where we can't see our way out, God still says yes to us. God still gives us a chance to respond to his call for us. Even our disappointments and shattered dreams may be the very means by which God asks us to make new decisions, try a new thing, make a fresh start. Maybe when we least expect, the Lord is giving us a new opportunity to grow up -- to grow up into everything God wants us to become.

So today we reflect on Mary's yes to God -- and on her no. And perhaps we can look at our own lives. What does it mean to say yes to God for us? For many of us it will not mean some drastic change. It may mean embracing the life we have and finding the ways in which God is calling us to live the Gospel, to build God's kingdom in our everyday existence. It may simply mean opening our eyes to the opportunities to serve Christ that have been there all along.Yet for some of us, God may be calling us to some new adventure, to a new choice. God may be asking us to say yes to something and no to something else -- to leave other choices behind and take an unexpected path. Whatever our individual situation may be, one thing remains true -- for Mary, and for us. We are all called to take a risk in following God's call. Jesus stands ahead of us leading us into our future. We have no contract, no game plan, no map. He invites us simply to step off in faith into the arms of the God who creates us, redeems us and seeks to transform us into all he has created us to be.