Our Lady of Loretto (at the Foot of the Cross)

Said Joseph to Mary,
“I dreamed a dream    
Of a quaking rock
And a maid’s shrill laugh
At crow of cock.
I saw lost keys
    As it were, of a realm,
Then a fisherman’s boat
    With an empty helm.”
​
Said Mary to Joseph,
“I dreamed too.
Thirty coins bled
Like a heart in grief
While a swart thief fled--
Thirty coins
    In a barren plot
And our little Son crying,
‘Iscariot’.”
​Sister Mary Immaculate (p. 98 Guardian of God’s Lillies)

​March brings two remembrances (or foretastes) of Advent in Lent: the Solemnities of St. Joseph and of the Annunciation. In both, we find Jesus enveloped in the loving embrace of His earthly family. In the first, perhaps we fondly think of Joseph, Husband of Mary, catching a little Sacred Body that hurls Himself at him joyfully at the end of the day. In the latter, we may have chills of wonder at the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary placing her hand on her womb and humming softly to God, who sleeps within. Truly, He is a hidden God, and these feasts seem to linger lovingly on the mystery of Our Lord’s humility: the flesh which He took from the Virgin Mary, the patronage and trade which He took from St. Joseph; the familial ties and ambient surroundings with which He chose to associate Himself in this divine choice…

However, one cannot cast a lingering gaze on the hidden life without seeing the shadow of the cross. The Seven Sorrows of St. Joseph and of the Virgin Mary frame their lives as one of intimate union between joy and sorrows. The very Annunciation which brought Our Lady’s great joy in becoming the Mother of the Messiah at once announced St. Joseph’s first sorrow, at deciding to separate himself from Our Lady. ​

St. Joseph’s sorrow at the poor conditions of Jesus’ birth are immediately assuaged—and more!—by the joy of His Nativity. Both rejoiced to hear the Nunc Dimittis announcing salvation to all nations, and both sorrowed at the pain which would come upon their Son from Heaven to redeem the sons of earth. It is the duty of parents to prepare their children to embrace God’s will for their lives: God’s will for His Son, whom He had entrusted to Mary and Joseph, was that He redeem mankind unto any cost—that He take upon Himself our sins and be obedient to the Father’s will for our redemption unto the bitter end. Unto death; even death on a cross. 

​Does this then spell gloom, and the burdensome shadow of future heartache to dim all our sunny dreams of the happiness of the Holy House of Nazareth? Yes—and no. Yes, in that any illusions of a happiness, in this world, that is uninterrupted springtime must be cast out. No, in that the sure knowledge of the Holy Family’s sorrows together does not show us an abode made dour with the bitterness of resented circumstances. Rather, it shows us the greater happiness that arises from a family that has entered into God’s will wholeheartedly; wherein no one shrugs off his cross, but each carries his portion of the cross entrusted to his family with love, encouraging each other member to carry his own as well, and preparing him for struggles ahead.

Such a family was the Holy Family, and such a family finds itself in such union of heart and mind, in the will of God, that it finds itself one flesh: the Body of Christ. And, having carried the cross with Him, in fidelity to God’s will, these same blessed ones will find, after every crucifixion, a glorious resurrection. May Our Lady, St. Joseph, and Our Lord Jesus—in all of His mysteries—be with you this Lent and Passiontide, and may they prepare you to embrace, bravely and lovingly, all the crosses of this season and this life, in order to enter joyfully into Eastertide—in the liturgical year, and in the heavenly reality. 

​