If you did not win this year, I hope the contest did bring lots of extra traffic to your blog. And think of all those people learning more about the spiritual life, because they read what the Lord is teaching you! Now it's time to start planning for next year's posts. If you have any suggestions on how to improve our contest, please add a comment or send me an email to cspirituality@gmail.com. And some of you should consider becoming members of Catholic Spirituality Blogs Network. Check out our Welcome page for details.
The winning post is re-posted in full below. Larry, please use this badge on your blog with a link to CSBN to announce your win. I will send you your gift certificate to Mystic Monk Coffee shortly.
Please join me in congratulating Larry.
New Year's Day & The Blessed Virgin Mary
We
Catholics have adorned our Blessed Mother
with many titles (47 different ones, I believe) and she is the greatest
of all
saints. We believe that she has been spared from original sin and was
taken into heaven body
and soul never having to die in this world. But, before she left here
she lived
here, as a woman, a mom and a housewife. I think we do not pay enough
attention to the earthly life of our spiritual Mom. January 1st of each
year we Catholics honor her with a day we call the Solemnity of Mary,
the Mother of God. In the Catholic world today is a Holy day of
Obligation and, just like on Sundays, going to mass is required. This
woman is worthy of and deserves this special day of honor.
Remember that Mary had already survived the possibility of execution by stoning because she was pregnant
prior to her marriage. You can’t tell me that she did not think about the
potential consequences of her pregnancy. (Even her Son, the God Man, broke into
a sweat in the Garden of Eden thinking about what was coming. Why
wouldn't Mary be worried?) She knew she was pregnant, she knew this was
an extreme violation of Jewish law and she knew the penalty. Her life was
out of her hands and her fate thrust into the hands of another, a man
named Joseph, her betrothed. Fortunately, he was the best fiancé ever, married
her, took her in and accepted her child as his.
Then, at full term in her
pregnancy, she has to travel with her husband over 80 miles on a donkey
to be counted in a census. She survives the four or five day journey (no
rest-rooms between Nazareth and Bethlehem) and the countless contractions she
must have had along the way, to discover that her frantic husband cannot find a
place for them to stay. She winds up giving birth in a stable with
smelly animals, lots of straw, no running water and who knows how clean
those swaddling clothes were. She was probably all of 14 years old.
Let’s not forget that after a while
word comes to them that Herod wants to kill their baby. Hey, all you moms and
dads, how would you like to know the head of the government has authorized your
child’s execution? Can you imagine? So, this poor young mom is forced to
make a 300+ mile journey to Egypt, hiding her child as best she can, while
all the time hoping her carpenter husband can elude the soldiers
searching for them. Talk about anxiety. Talk about fear. Talk about
having Faith and praying like you never prayed before.
It
probably was a year or two
before the family made it back to Nazareth. Here they probably lived in a
typical baked clay and straw brick house. Each day Mary would have to
sweep the beaten clay floor, go to the cistern for water, travel outside
the
town walls for daily necessities such as spices and grain, which she
would have
to grind into flour to bake fresh bread (no preservatives in those
days)
. Of course, there was the laundry. Trust me, there were no laundromats
and there were no detergents. There were also no diapers or Pampers or
band-aids or cough syrups or baby powder or microwave chicken nuggets or
McDonald's either. Her husband would be in his shop doing his carpentry
chores and her boy, Jesus, would be with His dad or maybe helping His
mom. And
life would go on, day after day after day. The years go by and she is
witness to his horrendous execution. No mom should ever have to witness
her child being butchered. She was there for His first breath and His
very last.
In conclusion, He came here for us and she gave birth to Him for us. She wiped His runny nose, changed His dirty diaper and watched Him grow up and be killed for us. That is why we call her MOM too. We believe that she is still watching out for us, her other kids. Ultimately, this transposes into the Greatest Story Ever Told. Jesus was the leading Man and Mary, the leading woman . You have to LOVE this story and its two main characters, from Beginning to Never-Ending.
In conclusion, He came here for us and she gave birth to Him for us. She wiped His runny nose, changed His dirty diaper and watched Him grow up and be killed for us. That is why we call her MOM too. We believe that she is still watching out for us, her other kids. Ultimately, this transposes into the Greatest Story Ever Told. Jesus was the leading Man and Mary, the leading woman . You have to LOVE this story and its two main characters, from Beginning to Never-Ending.
