The canonized women who are mothers add to our altars a special kind of incense – a two-fold fragrance of motherhood, both natural and spiritual. The very definition of their sainthood reveals that the life of the soul was sacrosanct to them and that while they nurtured the physical life of their children, it was eternal life which they desired to impart above all.
Liturgically, we’re taking a brief breath in ordinary time. We’ve lived the long wait of Advent, and Christmas has been celebrated and it’s trappings stored away – nativity sets snuggled in attic alcoves and ornaments stacked in garage bins.
We have never needed the message in this video (below) more.
Our nation-and the world-are slowly grinding to a standstill in the wake of a virus we were barely aware of a few weeks ago. How quickly things change…it wasn’t part of my ‘plan’ this year to have my kids doing all schoolwork at home, my college son’s commencement canceled, all public Masses halted. I don’t even think it has totally sunk in, honestly. I’ve been wandering around in a daze, trying to figure out what to do next and where to get Lysol wipes and eggs.
The canonized women who are mothers add to our altars a special kind of incense – a two-fold fragrance of motherhood, both natural and spiritual. The very definition of their sainthood reveals that the life of the soul was sacrosanct to them and that while they nurtured the physical life of their children, it was eternal life which they desired to impart above all.
We pulled up to my childhood home in the middle of the night, the Wisconsin green shrouded in darkness. I immediately sensed all the summers of my childhood in the dim stillness as the screen door squeaked shut behind us. Whispering, I led five of my desert-dwelling children upstairs to the bedrooms, each step groaning with a familiar creak in the century-old bungalow.
Liturgically, we’re taking a brief breath in ordinary time. We’ve lived the long wait of Advent, and Christmas has been celebrated and it’s trappings stored away – nativity sets snuggled in attic alcoves and ornaments stacked in garage bins.
I ran into a friend recently, another mom with lots of littles, at an indoor trampoline park. It was a sizzling summer day in Phoenix and we’d both reluctantly shelled out too much money for a few hours of much-needed activity for the kids.
It is a new calendar year, with new resolutions and new ambitious goals. We crack open delightfully empty new planners, begin hopeful new journals, form resolute new budgets, buy new gym memberships, and have jogging shorts with the tags still on.
Now that we’ve got Thanksgiving under our (slightly loosened) belts, it’s time to turn our attention to something – new. While to our worldly senses, the year is winding down with a celebratory month of shopping, singing, decorating, and baking, our liturgical year has really – very quietly – just begun.
Young ElizabethNext month the Catholic galaxy will become a little brighter as the Church receives a new cluster of saints. Among the holy handful will be just one woman, a French Carmelite considered by Pope Saint John Paul II to be one the most influential mystics of his life.
Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity was born as Elizabeth Catez, “Sabeth” to her friends, in 1880. She was a hot-tempered child with sometimes “furious eyes” whose father died while she was young, forcing her mother to move Sabeth and her younger sister from their home in Dijon to a smaller second-story flat. From her window, little Sabeth could look down into the garden of the Carmelite convent.
