I delight to be Your child, O Mary

 

Domenico Corvi: María y el Niño

O Queen and Beauty of Carmel,
I rejoice to be
in Your Motherly care.
No harm shall come to me
beneath Your watchful eye

I love Your tender smile
and the assurance of
my tiny hand in Yours.
O Mary, Fragrance of Holiness!
Purity beyond comprehension!
I delight to be Your child.

O Full of Grace,
draw me close to You
and let Your Motherly touch
leave traces of Your Sanctity
in my poor soul,
like a lingering perfume.

I thank God that
You are my Mother
for always.
O lovely and incomparable
Virgin Mary!

My baby and me……

It’s Mother’s Day, and I thought I would share again one of my favorite posts about my son…written last summer, shortly before his wedding.

I just returned from dinner at the restaurant where he works, and my darling daughter-in-law joined us. She gave me a card, just from her, which expressed her happiness at being able to “officially” celebrate Mother’s Day with me as her “mom.” How that touched my heart!

She also gave me a lawn ornament bouquet of three beautiful metal sculpted hand painted flowers which an artist friend of hers created. They are so happy looking that they make me smile, and I chose a home for them in the garden where I can see them from my kitchen windows.

I love having a daughter…at last!

Hope all of the mom’s who read this had a most Happy Mother’s Day, filled with laughter and love. And for those who are still longing for a child, I prayed for you at Mass today…..because I have been there too.

Here is a picture of my son and me, before my FIRST Mother’s Day!

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  (Matthew 19:5)

I hear wedding bells….and feel the tug of heartstrings.  My son is getting married this Saturday.

I’ve known since January. Where have those six months flown?  It is only now that I am pondering deeply the enormous change our family is about to undergo. Even happy, exciting changes can still tug at your heartstrings. Letting go of the familiar, the comfortable…what has always been, can be a bit daunting.

Change by its nature is uncertain, at least in the beginning. We have to learn what to expect, how things will be; we forge new ways and assume different roles.

I have spent the past week looking through photo albums and childhood memorabilia to find memories of my son which will be shared in a video and collage at the wedding. I watched him grow up again through his pictures. My dining room table is piled with his beloved Garfield paraphernalia, stacks of music awards, and framed photos of pint sized athletes playing soccer, baseball and football.

I sat up late the other night watching a VHS tape of him playing My Funny Valentine on tenor saxophone in tenth grade…and then watching it again..and again.  His dad and I were so proud of him that night.  He was amazing!  Saturday, he will be surprised to hear this musical piece accompanying the video of childhood pictures of him and his bride.

The other day, my sister and I spent the afternoon shopping for items to decorate the groom’s table.  We had so much fun, and as I tried to choose things I thought he would like, and which would express something about him, I realized that decorating this table  might be the last time I would do something so exclusively for him… all by myself.  And so I chose my treasures carefully.

That same morning, I had listened to another mother describe her son’s recent wedding, and she had mentioned how the cleaving she had felt with him had to be loosened and let go, for now he must cleave to his wife, as God’s Word says.

Yes, it’s true.  My son’s bride, among mortals, must be first in his heart and in his thoughts and care, from this Saturday onward.  I must step back…no longer the first to respond when he is sick or has a problem.  His personal life will become their life.  I must respect a new privacy, one with no place for my sometimes unsolicited advice.

As the woman mentioned above said, “It is painful…this letting go.”

When a father brings his daughter to the altar to give her hand in marriage, we see a visual of this “giving away.”

But mothers are seated in the pew.  We watch in silence, as our sons take their wives, and the bond is untied slowly in secret within our hearts, where only God can see.

It can never truly be undone, truly severed…that bond, which in a mother is wrapped so tightly, each little knot a reminder of a precious moment in her child’s life.

But yet, it must be loosened now, and yield to the wedding ring she wears.

I can hear the song being played on my heartstrings….love him always, love him deeply, take care of him as I have, never hurt him… and one day, give him back to God.  Yes give him back to God shining with grace and beauty…much more so than when I gave him to you…

And, remember to cleave, only to him.

The loveliest Mother of all…..

TO OUR LADY

By Mary Dixon Thayer

Lovely Lady dressed in blue
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little Boy,
Tell me what to say!

Did you lift Him up, sometimes,
Gently on you knee?
Did you sing to Him the way,
Mother does to me?

Did you hold His hand at night?
Did you ever try
Telling stories of the world?
O! And did He cry?

Do you really think He cares
 If I tell Him things-
Little things that happen? And
Do the Angels’ wings

Make a noise? And can He hear’
Me if I speak low?
 Does He understand me now?
Tell me–for you know?

Lovely Lady dressed in blue,
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little Boy,
And you know the way.

This beloved poem was a great favorite of the Servant of God, Fulton J. Sheen, who popularized it during the 1950’s.