Three and Then Four?

As September comes, we look toward the harvest in the fields, and liturgically toward the fruit the Spirit has coaxed into ripeness in the spiritual gardens of our souls. We have just celebrated the Transfiguration of the sacred humanity of Jesus and the Assumption of the humanity of Mary, his mother. Both of these feasts point to what we ourselves shall be.

 As if the Church is deeply pondering this remarkable revelation, she offers us three more feasts of the Mother of God in this month: Mary’s birthday on September 8, the feast of her Holy Name on the 12th, and then the feast of her Sorrows on the 15th, right after the feast of the Holy Cross. Could the Church be trying to tell us something as the Sunday readings look for sweet fruit from us? Then, as though three were not enough, in the earlier calendars there was a fourth feast of Mary: Our Lady of Ransom on September 24. No longer on the liturgical calendar, this was the ancient feast of Our Lady of Mercy. It commemorated her concern for those enslaved, and often set to work as rowers on slave ships.

I suggest that this is no coincidence. Mary had a birthday, and so do we. She was named, and so are we. Her heart was broken in sorrow and grief, and so too is ours. Finally, in this Year of Mercy, she is still concerned about those of us enslaved. Whether it be by what we accumulate day by day, what fear paralyzes us, or what addiction wraps its chains around our will. It is time to look for the Spirit’s fruit, and we might be surprised at how much there is. We live our days in swift flow, wondering at times where the time has gone. Yet all the while the trees of our lives are blossoming and beginning bear the luscious fruits of kindness, joy, peace, patience, mildness, chastity and more, all being shaped by those quiet happenings in our unique situations. We often are all too aware of the fungus. But make no mistake: the fruit is there too. God brings it forth from the water of our tears and the sonshine of the love of the Word. So it was with this woman who shows us what we too will be one day. Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy…our hope. Yes, indeed.

                                                            ************

Lady,

I bring you my soul’s garden.

Help me clear it of briars and brambles

that might suffocate the growth

the Spirit’s groaning has tried to bring forth.

Look upon my poor efforts

and bend down to wipe the sweat from my brow.

Drive away the grubs of doubt and the hungry beetles

of self-love that seek to consume what little I have to offer.

Take me on a tour, and show me what my tears have watered

From the broken vessel that I am.

Uncover for me what my humble prayers have produced

and what my patient suffering has sweetened.

Show me what you see.

Amen.

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