Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
A Feast Day
Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She represents Mary, the mother of Jesus, and is said to have appeared four times to Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531. That’s a long time ago and a long time for a legend to keep going strong. Apparently, Juan was on a hillside where beautiful roses were growing, even though it was Winter time. The roses were of a kind that is not native to Mexico. He gathered some flowers in his cloak and took them to the Bishop. When he opened his cloak, the flowers fell out and there was an imprint of the Blessed Mother. That cloak is enshrined in the basilica in Mexico City.
More of the story says that she spoke to Juan in his native Nahuatl language, asking that a church be built on the site. She also spoke to him as if she was his mother. By this time he was convinced that he had witnessed an apparition of the woman who gave birth to Jesus. She represented to him the Universal Mother who loves all human kind.
Having lived in Mexico, I have a beautiful wood carving of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She has been in all of my households since I was a child. Today she sits in a bookcase looking exactly as she has for the 70 years that I have known her. When I’m gone, I hope one of my children keeps her and gives her a home through the generations.
Today is also the birthday of my precious friend, Rose. We were introduced by a mutual friend some time in the late 1980’s. She was in St. Louis for a temporary stay because her job was waiting for her in South Africa, where she worked as a spiritual facilitator for groups of African Catholic Sisters. She did that work for a number of years, interrupted by occasional trips to St. Louis. Whenever she came into town we would get together. The more time we spent with each other the more our friendship strengthened.
Over the years she has become like family to me and my children. She watched them grow up and when they are in town we always arrange time together. Today she and I share meals, and coffee trips, and baseball games, and spiritual growth groups. We share a slightly irreverent, maybe very irreverent sense of humor. She has been a spiritual mentor to me, so sometimes we can be quite serious. But we never fail to see the absurd and the ironic, leading to laughter of the gut-busting type.
As with most Sisters, she is well past retirement age, but has never actually retired. She is busy with her own congregation, one that is gradually fading away. She is directly responsible for planning its orderly closing down, as there are fewer and fewer Sisters these days. Women are not joining the Franciscan Sisters of Mary any longer and the health care system that they started is a large, thriving organization that now has its own lay leadership.
Nevertheless, there are women to care for as they enter old age. There are assets to be used for their care, but also for environmental investments that are in keeping with the Franciscan tradition. Rose has been a part of these efforts for many years. She is a storehouse of wisdom, which she readily shares with others.
So, today is a feast day, an important one in the Catholic tradition. But the feast that I will celebrate is with a dear friend, like a sister to me, and like a life companion. I am blessed to know her and to share slices of life with her.