My New Favorite Color: Pink

Christmas may be over, but I'm still meditating on the Annunciation, the event in which the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary in Luke 1 and exhorted her not to be afraid, but because God favored her, she would give birth to and mother His Son Jesus Christ.

I was re-reading a blog post I wrote on April 29, and what I quoted from the George Weigel book continues to call me on. Again, he makes these four points about Mary's "Yes":



1. She did not keep her options open
2. She did not negotiate
3. She did not have an 'exit' strategy
4. She did not ask for a contract



This past weekend, I attended the Kairos Winter Conference (http://winterconference.info/). The theme was "Love for the World." We talked much about martyrdom. We talked about what it means to give a complete "Yes" to the Lord.


My friend used to tell me that her one dream was to be a "pink" martyr. My first reaction to this was Oh, she wants to be a very feminine martyr? Well, she explained to me that she wanted to be both a "white" and a "red" martyr, to live her life for Christ and also to die as a martyr. White + Red = Pink. This young woman is now a part of a cloistered Catholic religious order. I only knew her, really, for two weeks, but those two weeks of witnessing her every day life continues to inspire me. She continues to serve as a model of holiness for me. What she did were things such as: pray, laugh, speak of the Lord, read Scripture, serve her housemates, be my friend, babysit, sing, slide down bannisters, and go for walks. She also drank about 6 cups of coffee a day, three in the morning, three at night. Now, I like to tell myself that you can be a martyr and drink your share of coffee, after seeing how much she drank!


Anyways, there was nothing fancy about her life, not really. But the ways in which she lived her every day life were graceful, grace-filled. She is a martyr, what some of us might call a "walking saint." Some wonder at the idea of living one's life in a cloister. Some people say, "What a waste! Just sitting inside walls, praying, when they can be changing the world!" But I have often known, with full confidence, that her prayers for me carry me through times of distress. I often think about those two weeks, look back at my journal entries from those two weeks, hoping to learn something new about discipleship from these two weeks. She wasn't perfect--I saw her weakness, but what was remarkable about her was her confidence in the Lord. Her joyful confidence in God's love for her was the foundation of her life.


This was the take-home message of the Conference: We are called to be martyrs in our every day lives, in our words, and perhaps, if God wills it, in our deaths. At the women's session, we talked about how full confidence and knowledge of God's love for us is the key to giving that love to others, to becoming martyrs. Therese of Lisieux's Little Way is the "hidden" path to Heaven is confidence in God's love for us. It's the core of 1 John, particularly 1 John 3 and 4. "Perfect love casts out fear."


So: Is martyrdom hard, intense work? I suppose it can feel so at times, and Satan would like us to think it thus. But my cloistered friend, Therese, John, and the Lord himself, who says "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light," all remind me that martyrdom is an expression of love, a response to and a reflection of Love Himself. And Love Himself says to us, just as Gabriel says to Mary, "Do not be afraid, for the favor of the Lord is upon you." We are God's children, and we need not be afraid, for His favor is upon us.