I chose from among the many Marian Masses available for today the one entitled: Mary Pillar of Faith, Pillar of Strength because Mary is a model of strength for us--a model of faith not because her life was un-pot marked and everything was bliss but precisely because it was not. She knew the emotional turmoil of suffering and rejection whether directed at her or more often at her son. She knew the mother's pain of heart break.

Last week we reflected on the heart as the seat of personhood and relationship. Today I want to continue on the focus in developing and maturing in relationship and in faith. St. Paul says to us today: "Before faith, we were held in custody under the law, confined as we awaited the faith to be revealed."

Faith means freedom--but we do not always want to be free. Have you heard some say: Give us the old days when we were told when and how to do it? Give us our laws so that we can know exactly what is expected of us; so that we can know if we are right with God by the way we keep the law. When I hear that I usually ask; if we went back to that would it enable you to make a good confession? The eyes betray the enragement of the soul.

And Jesus tells us in the gospel that faith is a maturing process. You don't legislate to your teenagers the same way you have to legislate to your toddlers. Faith is about intimacy, relationship and maturity. Jesus says that God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God in him/her.

Faith then is about living in loving relationship with God, with others, particularly those we find in our hearts least loveable. We need to invoke the Spirit who abides in us, to enable us to recognize the dignity of every human being as Jesus speaks to us in the gospel tomorrow: To fail to recognize personal dignity; to be otherwise preoccupied or perturbed is to come the banquet without a wedding garment--to come to the banquet without a commitment--to come to the banquet in pretense.