Mary, Mother of Sorrows

The second sorrow of Mary is her flight into Egypt, her escape from destruction.  She is fleeing  with her son and her husband to protect Jesus  from being harmed physically.  She is cooperating with her husband Joseph, whom God has commanded

               “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there

until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him”

(Mt 2:13).

Many parents today face situations that are harmful to the welfare of their children. In our baptismal vows, each of us has covenanted with God, and God with us, to protect our children from being destroyed by a culture that is anti-God, turned away from the Sacred, resistant to grace and promotes the false self.  We live in a world, the values of which are opposite the Gospel and are in defiance of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  We live in a culture that promotes winning  and being No. 1 at all costs;  exploiting the poor, the oppressed, and  the vulnerable to get what we want, when we want it and how we want it.  The body, for instance, is used as a sex object to make billions in profits (the sex trade is more lucrative than the drug industry.  Advertisements objectify sex, as industries  use the body  to seduce people into buying their product.   We live in a culture that promotes violence, that seeks domination and control of other people’s lives, especially control of children, women and youth (both male and female) for the purpose of growing rich.

 

Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to [a place that protects them from

 the evils of a  consumeristic, narcissistic , pragmatic society] and remain there until

I tell you; for [the Herods of this world are searching]  for the child, to destroy 

 [his/her innocence, his/her integrity, his/her sacredness, his/her morality and 

 sense of justice toward self and others].

What do you and I need to do to remain true to our baptismal commitment to build a Kingdom that lasts, to do so  in cooperation with others and in surrendering our will to the Will of our Creator?  From what do we need to flee ? To what do we need to turn? With whom do I need to cooperate?

the gift of meditation, the gift of faith

The Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, according to their Rule or Constitution, set aside a minimum of 30 minutes each day for meditation upon the Scriptures or another source of spiritual nourishment. This morning I meditated on the first reading of today’s liturgy (Col.2:6-15). What an awesome reading in which we are reminded that we share in the fullness of the diety in human form in Christ Jesus.  We share in the fullness; we do not, obviously, possess the fullness. But even to share in the fullness of the diety is awesome.  How is it that we are given this gift? St. Paul  tells us that, on the cross, Jesus took our transgressions upon Himself, obliterated them,  removed them, nailed them to the cross.  All that causes death was nailed to the Cross with Christ and all that causes new life in God was raised to life with Jesus. In baptism, we, too, die and rise with Christ. The self that was alienated from God and the things of God by sin and selfishness, greed and lust for power, prestige and worldly pleasures—the allurements of the world, worldly philosophies and ideologies—was buried with Christ at our baptisms.  We rose with Christ through the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. The self that rose with Christ is a new self. We put on Jesus Christ in baptism.  We are now rooted in Christ Jesus.  Our hearts have been circumcised , that is, we underwent a spiritual circumcision, not a physical one.  Our hearts, not a physical part of our bodies, were changed by baptism into Christ.  By dying and rising with Christ in our baptisms and through the faith that was given to us in baptism,  we are now spiritually dead to sin, selfishness, worldly philosophies and ideologies, jealousies, lusts for power, prestige and popularity, fear of death (saving the self, not losing it in love, in truth, in purity). We rose with Christ transformed into new persons, reconciled to God and to one another. What a grace!