Adoration in Ordinary Time

It's easy to come to Jesus in the Eucharist through Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter.  In those times we can imagine the Blessed Mother expecting her Son, holding her Baby, watching her Son prepare to suffer, and the the excruciating experience of watching Him suffer.  We can enter into that in a kind of regular way.  Not everyone experiences it that way, but if you are a mom, you can approach it in a meaningful way.

But most of the year is spent in Ordinary Time.  Parables,  miracles, and travels mark ordinary time.  How does a mom enter into these with the same reverence that we can ascribe to our experience of having a baby leap in our whom, or the death of a child.  But entering into the parables, miracles and travels of our children will help us to more deeply relate to our children and their experiences.

Children tell stories all of the time.  When we first moved into our new home, my son told me that he saw dark shadows scooting across the ceiling in his bedroom.  The parable he told was that we had moved to a place where he would not feel as safe as he had in our little home.  But at our new home, we were caring for my mentally-retarded brother.   That was more important.

The change from toddler to child seemed to happen in a blink while we adjusted to the many changes.  First I tried to work full time, thinking money would make everything better.  Then I realized time was what was needed, so we changed our lives again.  Did Mary and Joseph make those adjustments?  After losing Jesus in the Temple, did they say, someone needs to pay more attention?

Mary and Joseph were gifted with a greater faith than I can ever hope to have.  But they most certainly had some doubts.  Didn't they?  I need them to have questioned once in a while.  Does that make me blasphemous, faithless, and weak?

I finish with a favorite quote from Mariette in Ecstasy, by Ron Hansen:

"And Christ still sends me roses.  We try to be formed and held and kept by Him, but instead He offers us freedom.  And now when I try to know His will, His kindness floods me, His great love overwhelms me, and I hear Him whisper, 'Surprise me.'"