Well it’s been a while and a lot has changed since I shared the Lenten devotionals for this year. We’ve moved to Kansas as Ben will be flying a new plane for the Air Force. We also were blessed in March to have baby number 6 join the clan. Nathan Patrick is doing wonderfully and just started smiling this week. He has filled our family with so much joy as each sibling squeals with delight when he gives them his goofy baby grin.
Ben has had a significant amount of training for his new assignment which has kept him from home. We continue to marvel at how fortunate and blessed we are to have parents with such flexible schedules. I am not sure how we all would have survived without the help of our moms and dads during this time. Big shout out to our families – we love you!
Perhaps you are already in the know, but only since my mom was with me to help with the kids did I begin watching the TV series The Chosen. My mom mentioned watching the first few episodes and enjoying it, though hadn’t gotten far and wanted to start at the beginning again. I hadn’t watched any and had some reservations about how the story would be told. But, I went along with her desire and I am so glad that I did!
I have found many things fascinating about this show. I love how it’s asking the viewer to really pause and consider all that went into following Jesus. The logistics, the questions, the backgrounds and social complications. I have found most of the assumptions and explorations into the lives of the apostles to be plausible and worth considering. I also very much appreciate that the writer has found consultants from Jewish, Evangelical and Catholic backgrounds to help find balance and respect for the vast range of tradition encompassed in these stories.
I have especially enjoyed seeing how Mary has been involved in the story. While she isn’t in every episode, she is clearly one of the group and the apostles listen to what she has to say.
I watched the most recent episode as of this posting (Season 2 Episode 4) twice because I wanted to catch everything in a conversation Jesus has with the apostles and Mary over dinner. Big James (James the son of Zebedee) questions Jesus about the feasibility of a particular prophecy concerning Jews and Gentiles coming together being fulfilled. “How can this be possible?” He and the other apostles ask, looking expectantly at Jesus. After going back and forth a few times, it’s not Jesus who ultimately satisfies them, it’s Mary. Mary looks around the table and simply says,
I know a thing or two about prophecies that sound impossible.
The impact of Mary’s words, of her presence at the table, cannot be overstated. I can imagine now, better than before, just how radical Jesus’ very presence was for the apostles. If they truly believed that Jesus was the Messiah, then all the old prophecies about about peace among nations, Jews and Greeks coming together, lame walking and the blind seeing – everything ought to be coming true.
They had witnessed healings, so those prophecies seemed easy now. They had experienced them firsthand. But others seemed more impossible to come true. How could all the nations come together to worship the King, they were enemies after all.
The power of Mary’s witness to the possibility of the impossible causes everyone to expand their imagination. Not only is the Messiah present before us, but here is His mother. She, who is human, draws them into the impossibility of what happened to her so that she can direct them to her Son, the fruit of that impossibility.
There is a famous Byzantine icon of Mary which is called the Hodegetria, translated from Greek to mean, “The One who Shows the Way.” I love this icon of Mary in all it’s forms. Mary is shown holding Jesus. While Mary is the larger of the two, you are still drawn to the figure of Christ because of how Mary is positioned. Her eyes are fixed on you, the one experiencing the icon. Her hand not holding Jesus is extended, her fingers often a bit elongated, in an open hand gesture toward her Son. She is not the point, her purpose isn’t to draw attention to herself. She is there to draw you in through her gaze and then gently bring you to her Son, the Messiah. In this moment of the show, I was immediately felt the iconic weight of what she said and how she said it. She was not drawing attention to her own prophecy’s fulfillment, but rather used it to gently draw the apostles into that new space of the possible that Jesus was trying to present to them.
Virgin Mary, Directeress
For a show that is not explicitly Catholic, I found this a very Catholic moment and I loved it! If you haven’t given The Chosen a try, I highly encourage you to. The first few episodes, in my opinion, take some getting used to as the show settles in. It really hits its stride around episode 4 or 5 and has an awesome conclusion to Season 1.
I’d love to know your thoughts about the show! Have you watched it, what did you like or dislike. Did you have any particularly moving moments? The app is free to download and watch all the episodes. Or you can find most of them on YouTube.
Daily Graces 