Today is Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I just don’t know what I would do without Mary. Why would anyone want to live without her? Sometimes I want to tell people just to give friendship with her a shot, try it for themselves and they will see right away what she is to us. When I think of Our Lady of Perpetual help, I think of how she was and is a good Jewish Mother. When we are in trouble, she moves in, cleans up, takes over, thinks of the little things that are actually big things we need. She rubs our back, she asks us if we’ve eaten, she calls her Son with updates. She makes sure we take a nap and have a snack and a glass of water.
She says, “Tell me what else I can do. How can I help? I told Jesus not to be late he will be here in a minute. Until then, here is some soup I just made. And a sandwich. Here you need more water you cried so much. Here’s a tissue. Wipe your nose. There you go. You know how much I love you, right? We all love you and you’re going to be OK. We will make sure.”
One time I had been crying for hours. I went to adoration and there were no tissues in there. I was annoyed. They usually have some. I got home and checked the mail. I kid you NOT I opened an envelope from a religious organization and in it there was a small packet of tissues. On it there was a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I had to laugh.
“Here, blow your nose, and go back out and play.”
She’s the best.
700 years ago in Ireland a young girl left her home in the middle of the night as swiftly and silently as she could. She left with a priest, two household servants and a court jester who were her friends. She was not fleeing a forced marriage to a foreign prince or running away to a convent. She was running from her own father who seemed to have lost his mind after her mothers’ death and was trying to make his daughter marry him in her place.
Dymphna and her friends were able to make it to a Belgian town called Gheel.
She must have been a hard worker and had a compassionate heart. She and her friends established themselves in the town and Dymphna began caring for the sick and the poor. She had a special sympathy for people suffering from mental illness. She still shows that sympathy now through her intercession.
Eventually her father, who was a minor Irish king, found out where she was. He had her priest executed as soon as he arrived and demanded Dymphna return home. When she refused he beheaded her on the spot. She was 15.
The people of Gheel eventually built a church over where Dymphna was buried. Over the years it began to be noticed that healings happened at her tomb, especially healing from mental illness.
Inspired by St. Dymphna’s special concern for the mentally ill the people of Gheel began to take into their homes the pilgrims who came to visit Dymphna’s tomb. In a time when the mentally ill were chained, beaten and locked away the families of Gheel made these sufferers part of their households with acceptance, freedom, dignity and whatever level of responsibility they could handle. Some stayed for a short time, some for the rest of their lives becoming members of the family.
Gheel became famous for this model of family care that seemed to work so well. This tradition is still ongoing though now combined with a hospital that is only used when absolutely necessary, and with modern medicine as part of overall treatment.
Gheel’s example makes us want to rethink the way we treat the mentally ill, especially those whose conditions are severe. Gheel shows us how it could be.
Among us here the mentally unwell often end up without homes or anyone to assist them. Federal and state agencies set up to help these people are understaffed and overwhelmed. It is a testament to serious failures on our society’s part. To see some poor emaciated sufferer shouting and waving his arms at traffic with toilet paper wrapped around his legs as I did last week breaks the heart. It’s wrong and we know it. Unfortunately our state is last in mental health access in the country.
Gheel and St. Dymphna challenge us. How can we as people of faith contribute in a respectful and merciful way to necessary change, to the well being of people who suffer mental, emotional or neurological difficulties? Our society is not set up for them. How can we help? How can we change that?
Perhaps we can begin by asking for St. Dymphna’s intercession and inspiration.
St. Dymphna, healer of mental and emotional suffering, pray for us. Pray for everyone in mental or emotional pain, especially those left on the outskirts without resources. You inspired a whole town to take people with mental suffering into their homes so that they might live near you and the place you are buried. They still come and stay with you and the people of your town today. Help us build a culture of compassion and acceptance so these children of God can live with dignity among us as the people they are and so that the rest of us don’t miss out on what they can give, on their potential part in building community. Show us the way. Amen.
St. Dymphna’s feast day is May 15th. She is the patron saint of the mentally ill, victims of incest and domestic abuse, and runaways.
“The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
I have not been rebellious,
I have not turned away.
I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame.”
(Isaiah 50:5-7)
Anyone can give intellectual assent to Christ’s existence, his nature and purpose. Anyone can quote Scripture. Satan did both of those things. When the devil tempted Jesus in the desert he quoted Scripture just fine. The demons exorcised by Jesus proclaimed his truth screaming, “You are the Christ the Som of God!” as they left the scene at his command.. So it isn’t enough to know the Bible or to acknowledge Jesus in order to belong to him. Following him, identifying with him, seeking unity with him, living as he did, loving him in all of his mystery, that is what being Christian is.
His triumph was all of the things that most confound the forces of hell: sacrifice, obedience, love, surrender, acceptance, humility, non-violence, abandonment to God, suffering and losing a fight in front of the whole world, and on purpose.
Even we don’t understand it unless we console ourselves that he was resurrected on the third day, which he was. But in that moment he died with trust and abandonment. He gave himself over and faced his enemies in silence.
This throws Satan, and sadly it throws us too.
Even we Christians hold a deep attachment to violence and revenge. We cannot let go of the exhilarating high of vainglorious triumph.
And yet the Beautiful One admonished us to take up our crosses and follow him.
I don’t think that is simply putting up with the hardships of life hoping for reward though I know that is part of it. I think we need to respond to the violent world as he did.
Turning the other cheek to me means, “I will not be turned back from love.” That kind of power can only come from God and we have to want it.
We have to renounce ourselves and follow Jesus. That’s how we find life and even find ourselves.
I haven’t gotten there yet. I have been there sometimes but it is not yet my home, my way of being. Not yet. I suppose that is how it is for most of us.
I still want to win. I want to win, I tell myself, for others; for the poor, for those on the margins, for immigrants. However, like anyone, my motivations are mixed. There is still a selfishness and pride in it. We all want to force things, to feel powerful. It is the effect of the fall of humanity in us.
The real battle we have is against ourselves, as St. Teresa of Avila says. And this is hard, she points out, “because we love ourselves very much.”
God gave us an innate sense of justice and right. There is nothing wrong with this. We go wrong when we stray from the Gospel. A line in the Oscar Romero movie, Romero got to me. St. Oscar said to a fellow priest and advocate for justice, who tried to talk him into joining the rebels with him on behalf of the suffering people of El Salvador, “If you do this you will lose God just as they [those he would take up arms against] have.” Whether these were St. Romero’s exact words or not it is an incredibly powerful statement. It rings utterly true. If we persist in our attachment to violence we will lose God. Nothing, absolutely nothing is worth that. And we will “lie down in torment.” (Isaiah 50:11)
I have read that some people are starting to complain to their pastors when they preach on the Beatitudes, that the preaching was too left leaning. When confronted with the fact that these are the words of Jesus Christ, they retort that this is outdated, doesn’t work, is “weak.” Look at us. We haven’t changed. The Cross, the Gospel, is still a scandal, still makes no sense.
However, When he was insulted, he returned no insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten; instead, he handed himself over to the one who judges justly. (1 Peter 2:23)
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).
There is really no way around that.
Even those of us who know and accept the teachings of Jesus have parts of ourselves still attached to violence and our own ideas of justice. We still hope Jesus will clear the world of bad people on his return.. Not us though because we are nice people, right?
St. John of the Cross said that even if the only thing keeping a little bird tied to a tree branch is the thinnest of threads, the bird is still tethered, still not free.
We have to cut the thread.
On this Triumph of the Cross in 2023, in this era of mass shootings, unkindness and cruelty, and the promotion of a lack of compassion as a good thing by a significant portion of society, even by a good number of our fellow Christians, lets renounce violence in the Name of Christ, embracing instead the way of Jesus.
We can’t belong to the Christ of Revelation unless we belong to the Jesus of the Gospels with all that he showed us.
Thank God he is with us to help us with his endless grace.
He who has begun the work in us will complete it. (Philippians 1:6)
We have only to decide, every day, and trust that he will triumph in us.
“I have promised it and I will do it, says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:14b)
July 29 is the feast of Sts. Martha, Mary and Lazarus, the siblings of Bethany. Bethany was a little village not far from Jerusalem. It seems to have been Jesus’ favorite stop on his journeys, his home away from home. Apparently these three friends were great company, and supportive of his mission. They had a house big enough for his travel companions, the food was great and Martha, Mary and Lazarus were always eager to be caught up on the latest adventures of Jesus and his itinerant followers.
Martha and Lazarus’ sister Mary has been conflated with St. Mary Magdalene since the Middle Ages and this impression continued for centuries in Christian hagiography and art. Modern Biblical scholarship and a pronouncement of Pope Paul VI put an end to that mix up. St. Mary Magdalen continues to be celebrated on July 22, and Mary of Bethany joined her brother and sister as her own person.
This leaves us with three Gospel stories of St. Mary of Bethany.
At the feet of Jesus (Luke 10:38-42)
Poor Martha is hosting all by herself, running ragged, resentful and starting to bang the pots and pans in the kitchen. Finally she decides to get her feelings out. She unburdens her heart right to Jesus. Isn’t that what we should do? Maybe not in front of the company, granted, but we should lay out burdens before him and be honest with him. He knows what’s inside us anyway.
I like to think the Lord’s answer gave Martha peace. All the times Jesus has straightened me out when I was wrong or off course I have felt instant peace. Whether what he asked of me was easy or unpleasant I felt peace and that’s how I knew he was speaking. It seems Martha had taken on more than she was required to. I have taken on tasks and responsibilities God was not asking me to and the first symptom I have is usually exhaustion followed by resentment and self righteousness. Eventually there will be an outburst. I hope Martha felt unbound and freed by what Jesus said to her.
It’s easy to see Mary feeling affirmed and freed, protected and understood by Jesus’ defense of her. I recently read that the way she is sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to his teaching would have been controversial in her time and culture. It was something a disciple did. Rabbis weren’t supposed to have female disciples. The study of Torah and the pursuit of knowledge was for men only. By sitting at Jesus’ feet as his student she was being quite bold and acting as an equal to the men. Jesus affirms her in this, allowing her to keep the place she has chosen.
Of course we also see Mary of Bethany here as a beautiful model for Christian contemplatives. She is deeply attentive to Jesus, looking at his face, internalizing all that he says, pondering in her heart.
During a skit of this scene we acted out as a family my then four year-old daughter Maire had Mary get up, offer to take over the host duties, and invite Martha to take a turn at Jesus’ feet. I like that a lot. Maybe it was that way.
Mourning Lazarus John (11:1–45)
Lazarus fell ill. His sisters cared for him and prayed over him, waiting for Jesus to come and heal him. They knew he could save their brother. They sent an urgent message. Mary would have sat by her brother’s bed keeping vigil, offering him her gift of profound presence and connection. Martha would have changed his blankets, kept a wet rag on his head, brewed medicinal teas, asked advice from the wise, sent for doctors, made favorite dishes she hoped he would eat. Sometimes they would have had to switch places and learn the other one’s ways of loving and serving.
Jesus never comes, though they keep a lamp burning for him through every night in hopes he will. Every footfall outside, every stirring they hear they think perhaps it is Jesus or at least a message from him. They don’t understand. Why doesn’t he come? Why doesn’t he respond?
Lazarus’ illness becomes imminently life threatening, their anxiety for him so intense, neither of them sleeps at all. They hold him in his struggle for breath and as life ebbs away.
They try to comfort one another. They ask each other, “Why did Jesus never come?”
They wash and anoint his body with the women of their family winding him in scented burial cloths to bury him in their family tomb.
The house is full of family friends and neighbors sitting shiva with them. https://www.shiva.com/learning-center/sitting-shiva
Finally Jesus shows. Martha as we have seen her do before, makes her thoughts and feelings known to him. She confronts Jesus while at the same time expressing her faith in him. She knows he could have saved her brother as he has saved so many others. She also has come to know and believe he is the Messiah and Son of God, just as Peter had also done and she says so. “Even now,” Martha says hopefully, “I believe.”
She runs to get her sister who is in the house with all the mourners and tells her Jesus is here and asking for her.
It’s when Jesus sees Mary’s tears that he cries too. This is important to me, to all of us. Yes for some reason Jesus does allow bad things to happen to us. At the same time, as Madeleine Le’Engle says, everything that happens to us happens to God too.
Mary also confronts Jesus, falling at his feet, her movement a desperate plea of prostate grief.
He doesn’t ask Mary for a declaration of faith. Maybe he knew she had it in abundance already. He only responds with his tears and his actions. He gives her her brother back alive.
Anointing Jesus (John 12:1-8)
This is the beautiful story that captures the imagination so powerfully; Mary of Bethany interrupts dinner, unbinding her hair, carrying in an alabastron of outrageously expensive perfume worth a year’s wages.
Since she seems to have been unmarried (as she is living at home) perhaps it had been meant for her dowry. To me this brings out an extra meaning. Perhaps she intended never to marry and to fully dedicate her life to Jesus, pouring out her love and devotion to him alone.
Her contemplative nature, her attentiveness and connection to Jesus lead her to anticipate his death; the only one of his followers who understood that it was imminent, and maybe even what his death would mean.
With compassion she comes to acknowledge both what he is about to endure and what he means to her.
Have you ever smelled spikenard, aka nard? It is not a floral scent but a sharp, pungent smell. It would have filled the whole house and the scent would have lingered for days and days in every room and on both Jesus and on her hair.
The others at the table were offended at her extravagance, saying the nard could have been sold and used to feed the poor. Jesus defends her. We will always be able to help the poor but we would not always have him. “She has done a beautiful thing for me.” She dries his feet with her hair.
Women’s hair was supposed to be covered in public and especially in the presence of men who were not their husbands. Here our Mary of Bethany unveils and not only that dries the feet of Jesus with her hair. I wonder what those present would have made of that?
I’m thinking of the spiritual marriage written about and experienced by the great mystics of our faith such as Sts. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Rose of Lima, Catherine of Sienna among others, in which the soul becomes one with God. Maybe Mary of Bethany was experiencing this or had. Maybe this bold and lavish gesture was her response, her understanding of his destiny born of that union and love.
Wouldn’t you love to be able to comfort Jesus with your compassion and love? To do something that is deeply meaningful for him? To pour out your love diffusing its fragrance through all his house, to smell it on your hair for days to remind you, knowing he also carried it? To remember his words, that you had done a beautiful thing for him?
We can. When we love, when we serve, when we pray like an oil poured out to the One we love.
Your anointing oils are fragrant;
your name is oil poured out;
therefore maidens love you.
Song of Songs 1:3
Happy Immaculate Heart of Mary day! I’m wearing my Immaculate Heart of Mary.shirt today as I clean house, watch my granddaughter and cook. Normally I would be at work on a Saturday but today I am not. As I clean or hang out laundry, I’m pondering Mary’s heart; open and free of the obstructions and blindness that would keep her from love. She had the freedom to be unreservedly given to prayer and communion with God.
Her beating heart also reminds us that Mary was and is 100% human. She is our sister. Because she is free from sin, she is us without impediments; able, as Eve would have been, to see other people’s inner truths as well as their physical bodies when she looked at them, and to see God in all things because of her purity of heart. When she looks at us now Mary sees and understands us completely with total freedom from selfishness and pride, able to love us as we are. She doesn’t judge us. She just loves us. She wants to give us everything. With all of her heart she longs to bring us to her Son more and more fully. She is totally human, totally pure of heart. She is all God’s. She is all ours.
Spend some time appreciating Mary’s beauty and humanity today, her love, her sweetness, her heart.
Where was Mary during the day Holy Thursday?
I think Mary would have been helping to prepare her Son’s last Passover today with the other women, feeling the tip of the sword in her heart as she chopped vegetables, listened to the chatter in the kitchen as her heart began to bleed. But I imagine at the same time she would have carried a shining joy because of her love for him.
She would have wanted to make this night beautiful for him and for the others too. At intense times like the last hours we will have with someone we love terribly, we are drawn deeply into the moment. We stay in the now letting love define it.
Her simple actions she had performed many times would have taken on an almost liturgical rhythm, a stillness in her heart, a sense of the sacramental as she cooked and stirred and set the table for him and his followers. Maybe she knew what he had planned for the evening. Maybe she would be as surprised as anyone. But she had to know his hour had come.
Remembering this and that she placed wildflowers at each place around the table, working her way around blessing silently each one who would sit there.
I think she would have snuck off to pray for this night, for all Jesus needed to say and do, her mother’s heart clutched with the frantic desire that this cup would pass him by, loving him and us enough to know if it couldn’t she must accept that it had to happen this way.
Back among the others maybe she let her eyes linger on every face with prayerful love, knowing they were about to be horribly tried by whatever happened next, but praying her Son ‘s words would have their full sway with them tonight.
She tried to prepare herself too.
“Bend my heart according to your will O God.” (Psalm 119:36)
Maybe God said to her that he always heard her prayers and would always do as she asked.
Maybe she told him she would always do as he asked too. “
Maybe she repeated to herself and to God her “Let it be done,” as she had at the Annunciation.
” At some point perhaps as she carried in water, or brought something needed to the table, her eyes would have caught Jesus’s for a second and they silently would have strengthened one another.
Oh Mary help us prepare our hearts for this commemoration, our participation in this Holy Night.
Imprinted fondly in my memory is the picture for “The First Joyful Mystery: The Annunciation” in the little paper book that taught me how to pray the rosary, The image showed a stately Mary, tall and dignified even on her knees. Her tiny perfect and improbably small hands are held out before the golden haired Archangel Gabriel. Neither of their faces show any emotion. They look like brightly painted statues.
As I tried to learn the rosary the Annunciation story from the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel was brand new to me. Reading it I was intrigued that God seemed to be asking Mary to be the Mother of Jesus. The Lord is not telling her or just making it happen. She understands this is a request and says yes. I was impressed with the spunk she showed in asking the Archangel for clarification before she responded.
I wondered what she felt. What did Gabriel think? Was he surprised at God’s choice of this young girl? Was he a bit worried? Or did he see as God sees, captivated by Mary’s beautiful soul?
The picture didn’t say much to me about either Mary or Gabriel’s thoughts.
It alienated me a bit that the serene statuesque and otherworldly Mary gave no hint that she was a real person. I think we can easily make the same mistake unconsciously. That keeps too much distance between us and Mary. If we think of Mary as a wispy apparition of untouchable holiness how can we be close to her? I wanted very much to be close to her.
My little rosary book suggested I think of “Mary’s obedience and submission” when she gave her consent to become the Mother of God as I reflected and prayed. I know she had these virtues.
However to me her courage and love are what amaze me. She accepted this commission for the love of God and for our sakes. I think she was filled with joy and excitement once she got over the holy terror of the angel’s presence and the unimaginable message he brought and his strange greeting calling her “full of grace.”
She would, as someone whose life was woven through with Scripture, have known how Gideon was greeted by an angel in Judges 6:12
The angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said, “The Lord is with you, ·mighty warrior!” (What? Me?)
It’s true of Mary though. If you read Genesis 3:15 she is in battle with the Evil One. She is a mighty warrior. The word we see translated as “enmity” (EBAH) here in Hebrew connotes the total hatred of sworn enemies continually at war with one another. She and Jesus are at war against Satan.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
For us she is the new Eve, the woman who is Mother of the Messiah to come whom this verse predicts will crush the Serpent.
I wonder if she thought of that verse too? She surely would have known it.
She definitely would have wondered what “full of grace” could possibly mean. She wouldn’t have been able to place it because the only other person to be called “full of grace” in the Bible would be her Son who was yet to come.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1: 14)
There would have been a lot of surprises for Mary that day.
What?! God has a Son? This is new.
“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Dt. 6:4) would have been recited by her family daily, and at Synagogue on the Sabbath.
What?! The Messiah is coming? Now? Through me?
She bravely asks how this is going to work since she is a virgin, a state she intends to remain in apparently since the Angel had not said when this conception would occur and she was legally engaged to be married. It could have come about in the usual way. She trusts but she does ask for understanding. (Luke 1:34)
Once she understands she is all in!
Our Lady declaring herself as the handmaid of the Lord is her saying she sees herself as the God’s low ranking servant. At the same time a handmaid has a very intimate place with the one she waits on. She is at his side handing him things, at his side as a helper, quietly present for everything. Maybe in this moment she suddenly realizes who she is and voices this. Maybe she always felt different but didn’t know why. Now in her humility she is filled with awe. After all humility is simply the truth about one’s self and inspires gratitude.
“The Lord has done great things for me and holy is his Name.” (Luke 1:49)
Rather than merely a gracious answer of obedience and submission I think Mary’s “yes” may have been more like Alan Shepherd saying “Let’s light this candle!” when he was about to blast off to the moon, more like the impetuous embrace of a joyful daughter of Israel.
It seems to me she would have wept with astonishment and the deepest joy. Maybe Gabriel did too.
Thinking of the Annunciation with Mary as very human and scared and amazed and surprised and real helps me feel close to her in that moment everything changed and God was among us.
I can almost feel her catch her breath – the wind of the Spirit rustling her hair.
St. Joseph Novena Day 9
You Lord, are a shield around me,
my glory, the One who lifts my head high. Psalm 3:3
St. Joseph living in glory your work is not done but is different! Now you have tremendous ability to share that glory and love and fullness of joy with us as well. And so we entrust ourselves to you as an understanding father who is also the terror of demons, the tender protector, the universal teacher and master of prayer and the Christian life. We want what you have. We want to live and work and laugh with Jesus and Mary every day. We want to die in their arms. We want to be with you and with them in Heaven. We are so happy it is your Solemnity; the Solemnity of your beautiful life, of you in your heavenly glory and you as amazing intercessor. We bless you St. Joseph and we thank God for you and so does all of Heaven. You have our love as small as our hearts are sometimes. May God make our hearts mighty to love as you did, as you continue to do. Intercede for us with your Son. Remain with us today in a special way. Amen.
Bethany Hang Out 