If someone came to me today with a claim as outrageous as the one Gabriel brought to Mary, I suspect my first instinct would be to check my pulse or look for the exit. To be told that the impossible is not only possible but is currently taking root inside of you—at a time when such a thing meant social exile or worse—is a terrifying proposition. Yet, as I sit with her story, I realize that Mary’s “yes” didn’t start with the angel. It started with a lifetime of listening to the silence within herself.

I often find myself caught in the struggle of trusting the “God within.” We are conditioned to look for the Divine in the spectacular, the external, or the historically sanctioned. We look for God in books, in cathedrals, or in the advice of others. But Mary’s motherhood demands a different kind of orientation. She had to trust her inner being first. She had to believe in the resonance of her own soul before she could believe the words of the messenger standing before her.

For me, this is the most daunting part of the spiritual journey: the call to self-awareness. To be truly aware of God within is to acknowledge a presence that is more intimate than my own breath, yet often more foreign than a stranger. It requires me to trust my own intuition—that deep, quiet hum of “this is true”—even when the logic of the world shouts that it is “outrageous.”

Thanks for reading “Emmaus Walk from Bishop Jos.” Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I wonder at the weight of that internal alignment. Mary brought the Son of God into the world not because she was a passive recipient of a divine decree, but because she was an active participant who trusted her inner landscape. She owned her agency. She felt the stirrings of the Infinite in the center of her own humanity and decided that her internal reality was more authoritative than the external expectations of her culture.

The contemporary poet Denise Levertov captures this beautifully in her poem, The Annunciation:

“She was not chosenbecause she wasmore naive than the rest of us...

She was chosen becauseshe was able to sayYes.”

That “Yes” is what I am seeking in my own life. It is the power that comes when I stop outsourcing my faith and start inhabiting it. When I look at Mary, I see a woman who dared to believe that her inner self was a fit temple for the Creator.

There is a staggering power in that level of self-trust. When I finally stop doubting the “still small voice” and treat my inner stirrings as holy, I begin to realize that I, too, am called to bring something of the Divine into the world. It may not be the Savior of mankind, but it is a unique expression of Light that only I can carry. The struggle to trust God within is really the struggle to believe that I am worthy of such an indwelling. Mary’s life is the radical proof that we are.

I often ask myself, “do I trust my inner landscape?”

I often find myself wondering, “if I could say YES when asked.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bishopjos.substack.com