Marian Monday Vol VI

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“Mary is a woman of the Eucharist in her whole life. There is nothing greater than the spirituality of Mary for helping us to experience the mystery of the Eucharist.”
- Pope John Paul II Ecclesia De Eucharistia (53)

They say that there is a thin line between loneliness and solitude, and I'm pretty sure I crossed the line into loneliess last week. This past week has been yet another trying and eventful one. Asides from being dreadfully sick and sleep-deprived while caring for the children on my own, I am still anxiously awaiting to hear an answer back from Washington DC on our status. My social network has been steadily diminishing over the last few months as I watch moving trucks take my "military family" to their new duty stations, leaving me still in this limbo. Not to mention, my son had a midnight medical emergency with severe abdominal pain (turned out to be gas). It's about 7 months of solo parenting and living in this indefinite & unnatural state of separation in our vocation of marriage, and it has been hard. 

I contemplated a few times on what it must have been like for Mary to be alone (as in widowed and after watching her Son's suffering and death) but still very much with God, particularly on that Holy Saturday. I think of what faith she must have had. A professor once wrote that "Our Lady believed in the light of that terrible night as she held His dead Body in her lap, as she prepared it with perfumed oils for the sepulcher, as she touched the wounds of His Body witnessing to that tremendous defeat. Even then she believed in the Resurrection, and she made a tranquil act of faith. She considered all those wounds of little import; He had promised He would rise from death, and He would. She believed. She had not the least doubt."

Yep. I am... can be... one of little faith, and yesterday in Mass, my heart echoed St. Ambrose in his Prayer Before the Eucharist: "Wherefore, O gracious God, O awful Majesty, I, a wretched creature, entangled in difficulties, have recourse to Thee the fount of mercy; to Thee do I fly that I may be healed, and take refuge under Thy protection..."  I read somewhere that if it wasn't for Mary's faith, that the Apostles would have dispersed after Good Friday. And I have to agree because I feel the same way. I have a lot of learn especially "entangled in [my] difficulties", and I am just thankful that Our Lady is perpetually there to set the example of faith and to lead us to the Fount of Mercy.

“Every time we approach the Body and Blood of Christ in the eucharistic liturgy, we also turn to her who, by her complete fidelity, received Christ's sacrifice for the whole Church” (Pope Benedict XVI Sacramentum Caritatis - 33). 

Thank you for those who left sweet messages last week and for your prayers. No words can truly express how grateful I am for them.