Richard Rohr envisions our yeses as a response to God’s first yes to us.
We have in Mary’s story what some call the second creation story in the Bible. It’s a creation seemingly “out of nothing.” Mary is the one quite willing to be “nothing.” God doesn’t need worthiness ahead of time; God creates worthiness by the choice itself. As I’ve often said, God doesn’t love us because we are good; we are good because God loves us. It seems God will not come into the world unreceived or uninvited. God does not come into the world unless we want God. God offers the Divine Presence, “the banquet,” but presence itself is a reciprocal concept. God is the eternal “I” waiting for those willing to be a “Thou.”
It’s no surprise that Mary became the icon of prayer for so many in Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, and in many religious orders, even though the Bible never once mentions her “praying.” The closest is that lovely line in Luke: “She treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19, 51). Why? Because every time we pray, it’s God in us telling us to pray. We wouldn’t even desire to pray except for God in us. It’s God in us that loves God, that desires God, that seeks God (see Romans 8:14–27). Every time we choose God on some level, God has in the previous nanosecond just chosen us, and we have somehow allowed ourselves to be chosen—and responded back (John 15:16). 194-195
We don’t know how to say yes by ourselves. We just “second the motion”! There is a part of us, the Holy Spirit within, that has always said yes to God. God first says “yes” inside of us, and we say, “Oh yeah,” thinking it comes from us. In other words, God rewards us for letting God reward us. That is worth noticing, maybe even for the rest of our lives.
Are we ever completely ready to echo God’s “yes”? Probably not, but I am convinced that the struggle is good and even necessary. Struggle carves out the space within us for deep desire. God both creates the desire and fulfills it. Our job is to be the desiring. For God to work in our lives, our fiat, like Mary’s “Let it be done unto me, according to your word” (Luke 1:38), is still essential.
We all find ourselves with this surprising ability to love God and to desire love from God, often for no reason in particular. That doesn’t happen every day, truly, but hopefully arises more often as we learn to trust and rest in life. Moments of unconditional love sort of slip out of us and no one is more surprised when they happen. But when they do, we always know we are living inside of a Larger Life than our own. We know, henceforth, that our life is not about us, but we are about God.e
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