He was incarnate for me, and His Mother is my Mother; it is to her that
I must look now to teach me how to spend these days before His birth.
Teach me, my Mother, to follow the great example which you set. Teach
me, too, to rejoice in the wonders of the Incarnation. Who should be
more filled with joy than I for whom He was incarnate? Teach me what the
interior life means, teach me to allow Him to be the mainspring within
me of all I do, so that the life which I live is not mine but His, the
words which I speak not mine but His,--JESUS acting, thinking, speaking
through me. This is the interior life which Mary understood so well and
lived so perfectly during her time of waiting. There is, however,
another side to the interior life, and this is the one we want to
meditate about more especially, while we are thinking of the Son of God
incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. He has taken human nature,
my nature, and joined it to the Godhead. He has made Himself a partaker
of my human nature in order that I may be a partaker of His divine
nature. I must not only think, then, of His working in and through me,
but of my working in and through Him. Mary entered into and shared not
only His Acts of adoration and love and praise, but also the work He had
come to do, His plans for the Redemption of the world. "They dwelt with
the King for His works, and they abode there" (1 Paral. IV. 23). How
true this was of Mary! It is in this that I must try to copy her. "I
will abide in the Tabernacle of the Most High," and I will offer myself
for _His works_, His interests shall be mine, He shall feel that _one_
soul at least, sympathizes and cares and intends to co-operate in the
great work He has come to do.
Let me, then, as the season of Advent is fast passing, ask myself once
again: Am I doing all I can for the spread of the Kingdom which He came
to this earth to set up? Am I trying to look at the world with the eyes
of love with which He regarded it, when He first made Himself incarnate
for it? Am I helping His poor, tending His sick, instructing His
ignorant, bringing Home His sheep, loving His little ones, comforting
His sorrowful ones? Such are "His works," and if I would do them, I must
dwell with the King and learn to do them in His way--I must live an
interior life.