6th
Sunday of Easter
at St.
Mary’s in Salem
8-9 May 2021
Acts
10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
1
Jn 4:7-10
Jn
15:9-17
For
Matins of the Saturday Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Absolution reads
as follows in English:
In this month of May, we should talk a bit about the Blessed
Mother in the life of the Church, in your life and in mine. Mother’s Day lends
itself quite well as a starting point to this reflection. The object of this
reflection would be to better understand Mary’s role as our intercessor before
her Son. Let’s start with Mother’s Day!
Small children nowadays draw lots of pictures. I cannot
remember doing that so much when I was little, except for Mother’s Day. Every
year, we children at home would draw and color pictures of flowers for Mom. They
were intended to represent our gift to her of the bedding plants which it was
still too early to buy and plant for danger of frost up in Moorhead, MN, by
Fargo. In my childhood, we were never wanting for anything important, but there
was no such thing as a money allowance that we could save up to buy Mom
something on her special day. Dad with Mom would go to the greenhouse to do the
buying later once the danger of frost had passed, but for Mother’s Day we children
did the drawing. The bedding plants we gave her every year were always the same:
geraniums, petunias, marigolds, and alyssum. When I got too big for drawing
pictures for Mom, I got to plant those flowers for her once she and Dad brought
them home.
Some half-grown-up people might not approve of this little
Mother’s Day ritual, but for us and I think for my mother too it was an
important ritual to demonstrate in a special way our love and appreciation for
each other, children for mother and mother for children. I know Mother enjoyed
the trip to the greenhouse, but she enjoyed our colored pictures no less.
Mother’s Day was our time to express in a simple but more formal fashion the
love and appreciation we had all year long for our mother. That is how love
works, children do not initiate the process or exchange, but rather respond to
the great and ongoing gift of our parents’ love and the sacrifices they make for
us.
One of the central teachings from Scripture for this Sunday
is precisely that: love does not begin with me.
“In this is love: not that
we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our
sins.”
“It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and
appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask
the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.”
Love
as a gift and a relationship begins elsewhere, namely, in God. We call God the
Creator of all things and that includes the virtue of love. It is our calling,
our duty to respond to His great love. But because Almighty God the Father is
unseen, I come to know of God’s love for me in the witness of the person and
life of Jesus Christ. 2000 years have come and gone since Jesus stood in our
midst, and so I rely on other witnesses to draw me into the great mystery of
divine love. The school, even with its imperfections, for understanding all
this is the human family. Children learn to love by being loved by adults,
first and foremost by their parents at home. We know too, that people normally
receive the gift of faith within the context of the family. To say that the
family is the little Church, the place where faith is passed on, is common
knowledge for us Catholics. To understand faith bound absolutely to hope and to
love takes our reflection to a whole different level. The family is the primary
school of divine love.
“In
this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son
as expiation for our sins.”
In
much the same way, the saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, play
an essential part in God’s plan for showing us His love. Jesus, Son of God and
Son of Mary, gave us His Mother as a help to understand this great mystery.
From the Cross, Jesus gave His Mother to the beloved disciple, St. John, with
the words to her “Behold your son” and to him “Behold your mother”. It was as
if Jesus were speaking to us in that John stands there at the foot of the Cross
on our behalf, accepting Mary and taking her home as his own mother.
It
is not uncommon to run into non-Catholic Christians who have little or no
veneration, no love and little respect for the Blessed Virgin. Their excuse for
withholding from Mary that childlike love we should have for her in imitation
of her Son Jesus is simply nonsense. They claim that venerating/honoring, not
adoring or worshiping which we owe only to God, takes away from Jesus our only Savior.
The constant teaching from the very first days of Christ’s Church is that Mary
and the saints inspire us; they lead us to the Lord.
This
teaching also spares us from any sort of determinism, which would exclude the
possibility of coming to faith, hope and love in a dysfunctional family. We are
not condemned, if our parents fail us. We are baptized into the Communion of
Saints. They can pray for us to God and Mary can stand in for our earthly
mother or stand by her to help us grow and inspire us to a holy life.
Today
we pray thankfully for our mothers both living and dead. If we can, we find
simple, but honest ways to thank them for love and life.
It is May and that is Mary’s month. “By the
prayers and the merits of blessed Mary ever Virgin and of all the Saints, may
the Lord lead us to the kingdom of heaven.”
Praised
be Jesus Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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