Mary the Widow

Calling on the name of Mary, our mother, is invoking one who loves with a mother’s love and to invoke the intercession of someone familiar with every grief and fear we can know in our lives.

The relative silence of Mary in the Gospels, surpassed only by that of St. Joseph, is something I think about a lot. Mary is frequently recounted as pondering the awesome weight of the mystery of salvation, and her seemingly impossible place within its plan, in the stillness of her heart.

If you read it a certain way, it almost sounds placid, though I am sure the reality was anything but that for a young, unwed mother seeing angels, or a widow witnessing the torture and death of her only child.

I try to resist inventing my own character of Mary in my mind. I try instead to think of her, our mother, as I have come to know her through periods of prayer and particular pleas I have made for her aid. Such moments are more often anguished than placid, though often silent.

But in that silence I have had — according to the very real limits of my spiritual imagination — fleeting instances in which I have met she who loves me as she loved her son.

Seeing it phrased this way in today's issue of The Pillar hit me with a jolt: she and I have something very much in common, and that unfolds all kinds of feels. 

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Update for Our Lady of Sorrows, from this reflection on Mary's Grief:

Simeon’s prophecy warned of the suffering Mary would endure throughout Jesus’ life and ministry, climaxing in witnessing his crucifixion, which symbolised deep, soul-wrenching grief. His words indicated that Mary herself would not be spared from the varied reactions to Jesus’ role in causing the fall of many and the rise of others in Israel, and that this would be a sign men would refuse to accept. However, the piercing sword would uncover the thoughts of many hearts. Mary’s sorrow over the rejection and murder of her only son reflects (both then and now) the feelings of many regarding Christ’s crucifixion: Jesus’ life and ministry are spoken against. His presence exposes people’s true hearts, forcing them to choose sides and causing a crisis where no one can remain neutral. Mary’s deep personal sorrow, caused by the sword is linked to this revelation of hearts, reflecting the effect of her son’s rejection. The prophecy highlights the ultimate victory and reward of salvation that come from following Christ, even through suffering. 

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Here is what Happy Catholic quoted on her blog:

Today's feast is an occasion for us to accept all the adversity we encounter as personal purification, and to co-redeem with Christ. Mary our Mother teaches us not to complain in the midst of trials as we know she never would. She encourages us to unite our sufferings to the sacrifice of her son and so offer them as spiritual gifts for the benefit of our family, the Church, and all humanity.

The suffering we have at hand to sanctify often consists in small daily reverses. Extended periods of waiting, sudden changes of plans, and projects that do not turn out as we expected are all common examples. At times setbacks come in the form of reduced circumstances. Perhaps at a given moment we even lack necessities such as a job to support our family. Practicing the virtue of detachment well during such moments will be a great means for us to imitate and unite ourselves to Christ

finally, this greatness, from the great Amy Welborn:

 If this world of Passionately-Chasing-Your-Dreams-to-Set-the-World-on-Fire is not your life, if your life, in comparison, seems too quiet and humble and maybe even painful to boast about, if, on a daily basis, you put aside your own desires so you can serve others, and the current flow makes you wonder about that, prompts you to wonder sometimes if you’re actually living an “authentic” “vibrant” “fulfilling” “faith-filled” life? If you are, perhaps, putting your real, important, significant life “on hold?” If circumstances have challenged and upended your achievement-oriented goals and you’re having to spend time shifting gears, serving others and making sacrifices for them and the greater good instead of chasing your own dreams? And if this time of adjustment and sacrifice seems to be defined, most of all by words like confusion, grief, frustration and loss?

Well, hang on – and it’s not me saying this. It’s the Catholic spiritual tradition, from Jesus himself on. Be assured: "In your sacrifice and, when it comes, in your sorrow, you are close – very close – to the heart of Christ." 

And so in that, peace. 

Simply Upwards

 Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo cultivated their love for God and for their brothers and sisters through simple acts, available to everyone: daily Mass, prayer, and especially Eucharistic Adoration.  Carlo used to say: “In front of the sun, you get a tan. In front of the Eucharist, you become a saint!”  And again: “Sadness is looking at yourself; happiness is looking at God.  Conversion is nothing more than shifting your gaze from below to above; a simple movement of the eyes is enough.”  Another essential practice for them was frequent Confession.  Carlo wrote: “The only thing we really have to fear is sin;” and he marveled because — in his own words — “people are so concerned with the beauty of their bodies and do not care about the beauty of their souls.” Finally, both had a great devotion to the saints and to the Virgin Mary, and they practiced charity generously.  Pier Giorgio said: “Around the poor and the sick, I see a light that we do not have” (Nicola Gori, Al prezzo della vita: L’Osservatore romano, 11 February 2021).  He called charity “the foundation of our religion” and, like Carlo, he practiced it above all through small, concrete gestures, often hidden, living what Pope Francis called “a holiness found in our next-door neighbors” (Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, 7).

Even when illness struck them and cut short their young lives, not even this stopped them nor prevented them from loving, offering themselves to God, blessing him and praying to him for themselves and for everyone.  One day Pier Giorgio said: “The day of my death will be the most beautiful day of my life” (Irene Funghi, I giovani assieme a Frassati: un compagno nei nostri cammini tortuosi: Avvenire, 2 agosto 2025).  In his last photo, which shows him climbing a mountain in the Val di Lanzo, with his face turned towards his goal, he wrote: “Upwards” (Ibid).  Moreover, Carlo, who was even younger than Pier Giorgio, loved to say that heaven has always been waiting for us, and that to love tomorrow is to give the best of our fruit today.

Dear friends, Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces.  They encourage us with their words: “Not I, but God,” as Carlo used to say. And Pier Giorgio: “If you have God at the center of all your actions, then you will reach the end.”  This is the simple but winning formula of their holiness.  It is also the type of witness we are called to follow, in order to enjoy life to the full and meet the Lord in the feast of heaven.

https://thedeaconsbench.com/pope-leos-homily-for-two-new-saints/

Already there

The dystopian future described so articulately by Charles Camosy in this article has already arrived:

At first, it will no doubt be the wealthy who avail themselves of the opportunity, given the high expense. Our society’s already wide class-based inequalities will be compounded by the biological advantages accruing to the children born on the upper social rungs. Class (defined by one’s place in the social production process) will be reinforced by new conditions of biological caste, giving rise to a new biopolitics: having a child with a disability or a less-than-sculpted body will consign people to the lower castes. Later on, as these practices become cheaper and more widely available, a sort of soft compulsion will likely bear down on all parents to optimize their kids (health insurers might decline to cover claims associated with non-optimized children). Having children the old-fashioned way will be the mark of a few “insane” religious fanatics — freaks and outcasts. 

Which is exactly how Christians were viewed by mainstream pagan society in the faith’s early days. Even so, a child-centered, Christian understanding of procreation defeated and replaced the ancient pagan culture’s understanding of reproduction. Could it happen again in our time?

Insurance companies already define their care for people with Marfan Sydrome and similar disorders according to whether or not they've been genetically tested; it's only a matter of time before they flip that switch, yet we are already being conditioned to accept their terms for our coverage. 

What's missing

A beautiful reflection after the tragic news from Minneapolis:

By all appearances, this seems to be a new kind of terrorism. It is not animated by a misdirected love of God, country, or party, but by a seething, despairing nihilism that comes when the heart sees nothing to hope in or cherish. It is telling that his target was a Church that offers the fullness of being.

If we focus only on the violent character of American culture or its broken moral anthropology, we miss something more foundational. We ignore that we are at risk of becoming people incapable of loving, even poorly. Love is a misunderstood word today, enlisted for political projects and treacly sentimentality. For Christians it is a serious business, as shown by the Cross and by those children martyred to nihilism while at prayer yesterday.

Do read it in its entirety, from The Pillar.

Martyred to nihilism.

Octave of Mary

 from the Assumption to today's memorial- we honor Our Lady of Knock-

Queen of Peace, pray for us! draw us into the Communion of Saints!

The Line of Seth

Read the whole thing, but it is always interesting to find one's name in a church document: 

“To enlighten our pastoral discernment, we must allow ourselves to be challenged by the Word of God. It does not give us ready-made answers, but it does inspire us,” the document said, noting the numerous examples of polygamy within the Old Testament.

“Nevertheless,” the document concluded, “despite this strong tendency towards polygamy, monogamy is exalted.”

“God created man and woman, Adam and Eve. This parable of creation has paradigmatic value” it said. “Moreover, the patriarchs of the line of Seth are monogamous,” it observes, and “the preaching of the prophets leads to an ever-increasing respect for women, symbolizing the people in their relationship with God. Biblical law guarantees their promotion.”

“Finally,” the document notes, “the theology of the Covenant exalts the figure of monogamous marriage: Israel is the unique spouse of the One God.”

“In conclusion to this listening to the biblical experience, it emerges that God the Father is a teacher who gradually educates his children,” said the text.

“This is the case with marriage and its different forms. He allowed polygamy to continue for centuries. But, in his Son, he shows that polygamy is not the ideal of the couple wanted by God. In the spirit of the Matthewian antitheses, Jesus recalls the ideal of monogamous marriage wanted by the Creator: one man and one woman.” 

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/what-does-the-african-bishops-draft

One Man, One Woman-- this is the consistent teaching across continents, no matter how a culture is striving to disrupt God's plan for the dignity of the marital act. 

Scapular promises

from The Pillar post for the Assumption:

Isidore Bakanja was born in a tribal village on the Congo River in Africa, in territory then occupied by the forces of King Leopold II in Belgium. He was born sometime between 1885 and 1890, though it’s not certain exactly when.

Bakanja lived in a territory called the Congo Free State.It was claimed personally as the territory of King Leopold — it was not a part of Belgium, but was ruled instead as an absolute monarchy, and controlled by unspeakable brutality. Leopold saw in the Congo Free State ivory, minerals, and rubber, which he had exported and sold to increase his personal wealth. He did not see, or seem to see, the people of his territory, many of whom lived in forced labour on expansive rubber plantations.

Bakanja’s family worked intermittently at farming and brickmaking, but they were very poor, and there were few opportunities for young men to earn money in Bakanja’s village. So as a young man, he moved downriver to a larger town, where he became a stone mason.

More important, Bakanja became a Christian — he was evangelized by Trappist monks in the area, and in 1906, was baptized, confirmed, and received the Eucharist.Bakanja took to wearing a brown scapular — a sign of faith — and to carrying with him always the rosary.In 1909, Bakanja decided to move closer to his village, and his family, and he found work on a rubber plantation.

His boss — like many of the Belgian plantation overseers — was fanatically opposed to Christianity, and to the Christian missionaries who spoke out on behalf of the dignity of Congolese people.

Plantation owners and overseers often said that when the Gospel came, their workers would stop working —but there is little evidence of that. Instead, it seems clear that the real danger was that Christian missionaries would upend the forced labor system which benefited the Belgians who had come to work it.

Soon after he started on the plantation in April 1909, Bakanja was ordered beaten when he refused to take off his scapular. His boss began mocking him, calling him the little priest. In May, still wearing his scapular, Bakanja was ordered beaten again.

A few months later, in July 1909, Bakanja’s boss saw him praying the rosary. The boss flew into a rage. He ordered Bakanja beaten more than 250 times with a leather whip into which nails had been embedded. After his skin was beaten to ribbons, Bakanja was locked into a cell, in which no medical care was available. There, infection set in.

Bakanja ran up a fever, and there in his cell, he fought off flies. He stayed there until an inspector was due to visit the plantation, nominally charged with evaluating the conditions of workers. While Bakanja was being sent to a village, to be hidden from the inspector, he escaped into the forest.

He lay dying for days, his infection growing worse, his wounds stinking and covered in flies. Eventually, he dragged himself back to the plantation, knowing inspections were still underway.

The inspector took pity on him. He had him carried to a riverboat, taking to a home where he could convalesce. But Bakanja’s infection had become sepsis. He would not recover. In late July, a Trappist priest was brought to him. Bakanja was anointed. But he held out for two weeks, dying on August 15th, the feast of the Assumption.

His boss, a man named Van Cauter, was eventually imprisoned. But Bakanja died forgiving him — and asking his caretakers to tell his mother that he died for following Jesus Christ.

When Pope St. John Paul II beatified Isidore Bakanja in 1994, the pontiff praised Bakanja’s conviction.

“Isidore, your participation in the paschal mystery of Christ, in the supreme work of his love, was total,” the pope said.

“Because you wanted to remain faithful at all costs to the faith of your baptism, you suffered scourging like your Master. You forgave your persecutors like your Master on the Cross and you showed yourself to be a peacemaker and reconciler.”

May Blessed Isidore Bakanja intercede for us. May we keep the faith.

Conviviality

When Newman converted to Catholicism in 1845 and prepared for priestly ordination thereafter, he discovered in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri the community he was looking for and introduced it to England. Newman lived as an Oratorian in Birmingham until his death in 1890, and his relics are venerated there. 

In choosing St. Philip Neri as his model, Cardinal Newman chose the convivial approach over the combative one. In 16th-century Rome, with the post-Reformation challenges for the Church at their height, two saints offered contrasting, but not contradictory, approaches. Philip Neri was the “saint of gentleness and kindness” as Newman would write, while Ignatius of Loyola was the man of martial combat. Ignatius viewed Philip’s approach as too soft, unequal to the moment.

Both are needed, but Newman chose Philip Neri. It is therefore amusing that Leo chose the feast day of Ignatius to confer the title of “Doctor of the Church” on a son of St. Philip Neri. 

Ignatius preached the importance of sentire cum Ecclesia (“thinking with the Church”) — and no one did it better than John Henry Newman. To think with the Church does not mean simply repeating with the Church. Thinking with the Church begins with thinking, and the convivial atmosphere of conversation, not combat, is conducive to working out one’s thoughts.

When setting out to found a Catholic university in Ireland, Newman set down his thoughts on the character of the men he wished to form. In his Definition of a Gentleman, Newman laid out what might be considered a thoroughgoing rebuke to the internet “manosphere” and its Catholic accomplices:

“[A gentleman] is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.”

-from Fr. deSouza's list of 8 Ways we need Newman now

https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/newman-is-the-doctor-of-the-church-we-need-now

Consolation

The enemy would like us to despair, trapped in the belief that “this” - whatever drought or suffering we’re in -  will never end. But our life on earth follows the cyclical rhythm of creation, the “law of undulation” in the words of C.S. Lewis. Whatever the season, whether it be disappointment, worry, frustration, or grief, we must know that joy will come again. It’s the eighth rule of St. Ignatius of Loyola to remember, while in desolation, “that he will soon be consoled.” Maybe you feel like you are in the middle of a long desert, or that your own inner house is getting “knocked about” and banged upon “in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense” (C.S. Lewis again!). This is your reminder that it will not last forever. -from the editor of Spiritual Direction.com

For help in discerning spirits the Ignatian way, visit here: https://www.discernment.institute/

Carmel Cloud

 from the Avila Institute newsletter:

Do you know that devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel is tied to the story in 1 Kings when the prophet Elijiah implored God to send rain? Elijiah told his servant to look toward the sea and watch for a sign that his prayer had been heard. The servant came back, saying, “There is nothing.” Elijah sent him back seven times, and on the seventh time, the servant returned saying, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” And it began to rain. 

 

The small cloud is seen by many Christian saints and mystics—especially in the Carmelite tradition—as a symbol of Mary, who brings the hope of salvation just as the cloud brought rain to the dry land. 

 

In preparation for the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I invite you to pray with the first stanza of the poem, “The Cloud of Carmel” by Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD) and meditate on how Our Lady encloses us within herself like a cloud, hiding us in her tender motherhood: 

 

The Cloud of Carmel

 

Symbol of star or lily of the snows,

Rainbow or root or vine or fruit-filled tree:

These image the Immaculate to me

Less than a little cloud, a little light cloud rising

From Orient waters cleft by prophecy.

And as the Virgin in a most surprising 

Maternity bore God and our doomed race,

I who bear God in mysteries of grace

Beseech her: Cloud, encompass God and me. 

Collapsing while rebuilding

excerpt from an article in Huffpost:

From research participants and grief scholars, I’ve come to understand this as the loss of self-familiarity. We aren’t sealed-off individuals, we’re co-created through our relationships. So when someone central to you dies, it’s not just grief. It’s the slow, disorienting unraveling of who you were in their presence...

Because what grief did to me and to other mourners wasn’t just emotional. It was embodied. It was cognitive. It was identity-shattering...

When you begin to lose yourself, you realize you are made of multiple parts. Some are intact — even strengthened — and others are still collapsing...

And here is what becoming unfamiliar with yourself does: It makes it incredibly hard to rebuild and heal. People ask you what you need and you have no clue. You don’t like what you used to. What used to bring you joy no longer does. And so, you lose trust in yourself. You become alienated from yourself and from others...

It is possible to rebuild, but let’s not pretend this is simple. It is complex, layered, and you have to start from scratch in places you thought were solid...It’s not a clean return. It’s slow. Layered. And still, somehow, holy.

Sacred Heart of Jesus!

 My daughter, look into My Merciful Heart and reflect its compassion in your own heart and in your deeds, so that you, who proclaim My mercy to the world, may yourself be aflame with it (Diary, 1688).

Way of the Beatitudes

Evangelization, dear brothers and sisters, is not our attempt to conquer the world, but the infinite grace that radiates from lives transformed by the Kingdom of God. It is the way of the Beatitudes, a path that we tread together, between the “already” and the “not yet,” hungering and thirsting for justice, poor in spirit, merciful, meek, pure of heart, men and women of peace. Jesus himself chose this path: to follow it, we have no need of powerful patrons, worldly compromises, or emotional strategies. Evangelization is always God’s work.        -Pope Leo XIV, on the vigil of Pentecost