Want to Be a Saint? Think Like a MOM!

This post has been floating around in my head for awhile, and today being Mother's Day, it was exactly the push I needed to get it written.

In a previous post I reflected upon why we refer to God as "Father," instead of "Mother."  All of God’s actions come from “the outside” so to speak, and in this way are Fatherly.  The Church on the other hand – and the individual souls that make it up - is the  part of creation that has received God into itself and allowed him to bring forth new supernatural life.  In this analogy, whether biologically male or female, each human soul resembles the feminine.  This explains why Scripture refers to the Church as Christ’s Bride (Eph.5:22-23), and the Mother of the faithful (Rev.12:17).

Mary of Nazareth is where we see this reality most concretely.  She is the great image of the Church (see Lumen Gentium, 63-65).  Each of us is called to become pregnant with the Lord Jesus and give birth to Him in our lives.  The words spoken to Mary are spoken to our souls as well:  "you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son ... He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High"  And how is this possible?  "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God" (Lk. 2:35).

It occurs to me that if we want to become Saints, we have to think like a mom:
1.  Nothing is more important to a mom than the new life growing within her (Mk. 8:36).
2.  She would gratefully sacrifice her own life to save her child's (Mk. 8:35).
3.  Throughout pregnancy she follows her doctor's advice to the letter (James 1:21-25).   
4.  She doesn't let things that could harm the baby enter her body, even if she enjoyed them in the past - such as alcohol or caffeine (1 Cor. 9:24-27)
5.  Instead, she nurtures the new life within her by making sure to eat right (Jn. 6:56-57)

It's clearly not an exhaustive list; please feel free to make additions in the comments!  Happy Mother's Day.

A Grateful Dad

I have not felt well the past few days, but the silver lining has been the way my kids have expressed their affection and taken care of me.  Getting me this or that, getting themselves this or that so I could rest on the couch - they are extremely generous little souls.

I am a grateful dad in another sense too. I remember attending Mass a couple of Sundays after my oldest, Brennan, was born and as the Eucharistic prayer began, just weeping in a loving awe at the realization that swept over me:  My little boy, the most important person in the world to me, was loved by Jesus. Jesus had stretched out His arms and let nails be driven through them for my child. I was grateful that Jesus had died for me, but now I felt an unspeakably deeper gratitude because He had laid down His Life for my child !  After Lily's birth, that gratitude doubled.

I make the Apostle Paul’s prayer for his readers my own this afternoon:  "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph.3:17-19)

Choice, Consequence, & Blessing

Just spoke to a friend and she was curious whether I was going to blog about Gov. Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy. The thought had never really occurred to me; it didn't seem like any of my business. My friend changed my mind when she told me how much media coverage it has generated; because I can't imagine what could justify that. What pregnant 17-year-old, with so much already on her mind, wants to be made a headline?

Is this supposed to be a scandal because Palin is a "conservative," running on "conservative family values?" Is anyone honestly asking if Palin encouraged her daughter to become pregnant at 17? Here's the newsflash: 17-year-olds make their own choices.

Objectively, the choice Gov. Palin's daughter and a young man made when they engaged in pre-marital sex was wrong, and there are many different facets as to why that is. The consequence of their choice was a pregnancy - a child. Now, talk about writing straight with crooked lines - God took their choice and has blessed the world with a new life, a brand new human being who can live eternally in the Trinity! And Gov. Palin's daughter gets that; she is carrying this child to term. It can be easy to be pro-life in the abstract; but that 17-year-old is being pro-life when it really counts, when it hurts. Let me hear a sound bite celebrating that!

Now, I'm sure she and her boyfriend realize that they should have waited, and regret the fact that they didn't. But I hope they also realize that God loves them and that He gave them the grace to accept the "consequence" of their choice, the BLESSING of a CHILD. And we need to keep this young family in our prayers, that they can be the kind of parents that Mary and Joseph were. (You remember Mary don't you, that 14 or 15-year-old girl who found herself pregnant out of wedlock?) God was with Mary and Joseph and things turned out pretty well (although it probably didn't look or smell like it would in that Bethlehem stable). I know the present situation is different, but God's desire to transform this young man and woman into successful parents and give their child a good home isn't. Oh yeah, and props to Barack Obama for telling the media to drop this "headline."