Reflection for the 24 Sunday of Ordinary time, week beginning 12 September 2021.
This has been composed on September 8th, the great feast of the Birthday of Mary, Mother of God and Our Mother.
We are told that Joachim and Anne, her parents, had waited long for a child. We can but imagine the degree of their spiritual maturity and loyalty to their Jewish Faith, for them to have been so richly graced by God in their daughter, their only child. She would be the highest honour of the human race – the only member thereof, to never have had the mark of Original Sin on her soul, passed down from Adam and Eve.
This coming Wednesday, September 15th, is the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. In the Pieta, the sculpture by Michelangelo, we see the dead body of God’s Son, taken down from the cross and placed in her lap.
Certainly, no-one understands the pain of bereavement more than Our Blessed Lady. Within a mere 30 years from the stable of Bethlehem, she must again “cradle” her Son in the “cradle” of death. This was the culmination of her sorrows for she had travelled the Way of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa, seeking at each stage of his painful journey, to be as physically close to him, as allowed by such traumatic circumstances. Then we can but imagine her sheer joy – the mutual joy of Mother and Son when they met one another, one-to-one at his Resurrection.
At every Mass we principally encounter the Risen Jesus in Word and Sacrament, as we journey towards our heavenly meeting with him in all his glory.
Good Shepherd Catholic Church 