Stomach Flu..

I am ill with a bug of some sort, so I am being lazy and borrowing from Sister Janet again. What she writes is always profound and this one is no exception! For those of you who also receive Sister Pat's Peace Letter I apologize for the repeat.

On a personal note...

Jesus and Mary

When Jesus was taken down from the cross, he was put in the arms of
Mary, his mother. It occurred to me that when that happened, Mary's
clothes must have become stained with the blood of her son. We talk
about having been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, but Mary was the
first one to be stained with the blood of the Cross. She was the
first person to be redeemed by the death of Jesus.

For hundreds of years it has been thought that a cloth that was
found in Turin in Italy was actually the burial cloth of Jesus. The
Holy Shroud, as it is called, is marked with the figure of a man
who had been crucified. It seems as though there is a strong chance
that the cloth might be genuine.

I've been reading the book written by a man who conducted several
scientific tests on tiny fragments of the Shroud in an attempt to
see if the cloth is genuine. It made me think that, although we
might have Jesus' burial cloth, I've never heard of anybody having
fragments of whatever clothes Mary might have been wearing when she
held Jesus once he had been taken down from the Cross.

I thought about that and tried to put myself in the position of
Mary.

It seems to me that, if any mother is to hold her dead child, she
does not want to be reminded of the way in which her child died,
especially if the child died in a brutal manner, as did Jesus. I
imagine that, rather than keeping her clothes as a precious relic
for future generations, the first thing Mary did when she returned
home would be to wash them. Perhaps they were so heavily
bloodstained that she simply burned them. She wouldn't want to have
them lying around the house, even if it were Jesus' blood on them.
As mother, she wouldn't want to be reminded of the agony suffered
by her Son. She wouldn't want to be reminded of her own feelings of
pain and helplessness as she watched Jesus die.

Perhaps that is why we don't have any relics of Mary's.

There is a very old tradition that suggests that before Jesus
appeared to Mary Magdalen, he went first to see his mother. I hope
he did. That tradition fits in with my understanding of Jesus as a
loving son. If anybody had suffered with Jesus, Mary had. I can't
think that Jesus would appear to his friends and not to his mother.
However there is nothing in Scripture that tells us whether or not
Jesus visited Mary. Is this one more thing that Mary would keep
secret for the rest of her life? Is it one more thing that would
remain inside her heart for the rest of her life?

I wonder what Jesus and Mary would have said to each other. Both
had been through the biggest experience of their lives. His Father
had also brought Jesus back to life. It seems to me that whatever
Jesus and Mary talked about, it wouldn't have been something as
trivial as the weather. Exactly what they said is something we'll
probably never know. What they would have experienced was complete
love for each other.

Lord, you and your mother shared so many precious moments. You must
have given her so much joy after the resurrection, but perhaps she
scolded you for having made her suffer also. Lord, there are times
when we can, deliberately or accidentally, cause suffering to
people we love. Help us to understand when we have been hurt. Help
us to forgive. When we have caused pain, help us to say sorry. Help
us to love and to accept love.

Amen

God bless, Sr. Janet

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