Saturday, June 25, 2022
Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Light shines in the darkness
Everywhere I went yesterday, men and women sat looking mostly dead, staring into space. At the medical clinic, on the streets waiting for buses, sitting on the doorstep outside an old house, and then even at the physical therapy center, I felt my heart break over and over.
On the ground in silence sit the old men of daughter Zion; they strew dust on their heads and gird themselves with sackcloth. Worn out from weeping are my eyes, within me all is in ferment; my gall is poured out on the ground as child and infant faint away in the open spaces of the town.
And then there was me. I had ultrasounds and physical therapy, I had blood draws and doctor visits with one medical person after another who were leaving their jobs, going home to care for kids and ancient mothers, not to return. A whole department of Christie Clinic was turned upside down with resignations. Back at home with my positive results in hand, I felt overturned myself, in a delicate oasis after the apocalypse, one of very few left out on the road.
In vain they ask their mothers, “Where is the grain?” as they faint away like the wounded in the streets of the city, and breathe their last in their mothers’ arms.
Was Jeremiah weeping when he wrote this lament? Could he see at least in his mind’s eye, or was he sitting outside in the Jerusalem sun, hearing the weeping up one street and down the next? No one had been listening, and now they were dying one by one. Their leaders – their prophets, priests and kings – all turned away from truth and now all gone.
Your prophets had for you false visions. They did not lay bare your guilt, they pretended to see false portents. Now cry out to the Lord, and moan, O daughter Zion! Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Great as the sea is your downfall.
But yesterday the stock market was up a bit. Doomsday seems a bit further off. Gas prices are leveling off. Wars remain isolated and in the sunshine it’s easier to imagine a decent future for our grandchildren. Our car starts in the morning. What is truth?
Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your little ones who faint from hunger at the corner of every street. Your foes roar triumphantly in your shrine; they are like men coming up with axes to a clump of trees. They set your sanctuary on fire.
Whether or not I am terrified depends on where I look. Lord, what do you want us to see? How do we return to you? In conversation with you, hope springs up from our words together. We have all we need. We must not mistake either persecution or prosperity, neither comfort nor suffering, for your eternal gifts, which are all in place forever.
Look to your covenant, O Lord, for the hiding places in the land are full of violence. May the humble not retire in confusion. May the afflicted and the poor praise your name.
What surprising passages to honor the immaculate heart of Jesus’ mother Mary. But then I think of the prayer dedicated to her, the Rosary, or Crown of Roses. As I move through the prayer, I consider various mysteries in Mary’s life, some Glorious, some Joyful, some Sorrowful, and some Luminous. Mary watched her son Jesus wear his own Crown, not of roses but of thorns. Mary saw through his eyes when he wept over the streets and hills of Jerusalem. “See your house is left to you desolate” (Matthew 23, Luke 23).
Perhaps choosing Lamentations is not so surprising after all. And then the gospel – Mary is afraid Jesus is lost back in Jerusalem. He was lost, and then found.
But why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?
We are all lost, and we are all found. God’s creation proceeds from day to day. There is no need for us to join the voices we hear panicking around us.
(Lamentations 2, Psalm 74, Luke 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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