Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

No that was not an announcement. But I am tired of Lent now and as I was wallowing…I mean meditating…on just how very tired I was of Lent this morning, it occurred to me how much Lent is like pregnancy.

First, God plays the same practical joke thing on my memory with regard to Lent as He does with regard to pregnancy. The first time you get pregnant you don’t know exactly what to expect, so you look forward to it with intense joy-of-bringing-forth-new-life sorts of feelings; then, comes the nausea (There’s a place in Dante’s tenth circle of hell for the person who named it “Morning Sickness”….it’s “Alive and Breathing Sickness” thankyouverymuch.), the bloating, and the heartburn just to name a few of the “joys” of bringing-forth-new-life. What expectant mom doesn’t thrill to the flutter of New Life only to re-think that position when the interloping wretch uses your bladder as a trampoline, kicks your liver, and then sticks its cute little butt right where your lungs used to live? Pregnancy is just God’s way of making sure you don’t mind labor. By the time labor rolls around, I am ready to rip my skin off to get that baby OUT of there. What about labor? You know it’s going to hurt. I mean after all it doesn’t take a physics major to look at the size of the baby, the size of the exit God installed, do the resulting math, and figure out….that’s gonna hurt! But when those first real pains roll over you and your eyes bulge out and your toenails crack, you realize that there was no way your imagination was up to the reality of it all. And worse…there’s only one. way. out. (Thank you Lord for anesthesiolgists…I did natural childbirth the first time around. These days, I have an anesthesiologist’s number on speed dial just in case.) And when it’s all over God knows that you’d never do it again if you were right-thinking so He plays this little practical joke. The first time you nuzzle your face into that sweet baby’s neck and breathe, you forget all the times that little rascal poked your kidneys with his elbow! Even now, I find myself thinking utterly ridiculous thoughts such as I couldn’t have been THAT nauseous could I? Surely it was all in my head like so many men have suggested? Surely the heartburn wasn’t THAT bad…..

Lent is like that. Forgetting just how tired I got of Lent last year, I get all geared up for a season of Lenten sacrifice. It is probably clear evidence of spiritual pride that I think THIS year, Lent will be easy. After all it’s only 40 days. What it is, is evidence of that memory tampering device similar to that one that allows women to willingly have more than one child. As Ash Wednesday approaches, I pray about what God would like to teach me. I think about what I should give up. What I should add. And I get REALLY excited about it all. I have to remind myself that I have done this enough times now to know what’s around the corner and that I do not need to be signing up early for those mid-Lenten doldrums. Just like pregnancy, I enter Lent with the best of joyful intentions but the joy of bringing forth new spiritual life isn’t enough to make me smile kindly on sacrifice any more than the joy of bringing forth a new child in the world is enough to make me overlook backflips on my bladder. The flesh is strong and the mid-Lenten doldrums are miserable! I am not nearly as strong as Our Lord, Satan came to him when He was exhausted at the END of 40 days. The temptations to crankiness, and snarkiness, and petulance, and to just flat quit come to me far earlier than the 40 day mark.

And I wonder, did Our Lord struggle with doldrums like these? Did He look down from the Cross and say, you know “This joy of bringing-forth-New-Life is just a TAD more painful and uncomfortable than I really bargained for?” Probably not. But still I wonder and it makes me look at Genesis 3:16 with new eyes. ‘To the woman he said: “I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children.”‘ The Lord never tells us all of His thinking behind that. Certainly it is viewed as a punishment by many (most?) but is it? Is it maybe God’s way of anticipating the great sorrow the descendants of Eve would have for their sins? God writes in our very flesh the cost of bringing forth new life. It’s uncomfortable. It’s nauseating. It keeps you up at night. And the little brats are often exceedingly ungrateful. And there is pain, deep gut-wrenching pain. And you hate it and you are tempted with the idea that NOBODY is worth that and then you breathe in that fresh-baby smell and you know it is. And that you’d willingly do it all over again. And again. He speaks to me in that knowledge. He says “Just as you willingly bear the pain for your children. Even so, will I do it for you. You willingly bear the pain for the joy that comes after. Just like Me.” Seen in that light it’s more of a gift than a punishment.

And so I persevere. Snark. Snark. Because I know the cost of bringing forth new life. It’s always uncomfortable. It’s always painful. There is new life waiting for us at the end of Lent. The Resurrection which marks the ultimate victory over death and the end of Lent where hopefully, I will be able to rejoice in the death of another tiny piece of that pesky flesh. A small skirmish in the grand scheme of things but it’s looking like a pretty big battle at the moment.

It’s up on Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering. May I particularly recommend this post on Legens and Cogitans? I will never think of the “Haily Mary” in the same way.

When my family gathered in the evening for our family prayers, we would pray the Hail Mary amongst other prayers. At one point, we children were becoming sloppy in reciting this prayer. We would say, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, at the hour of our death, amen.” skipping the ‘and’. My mother corrected us, saying that we were not going to die soon so we should be sure to include the “and”.

However, what we prayed mistakenly, could be understood on a deeper level. When we consider death to self, this does happen in the now, and we can hope that Mary is indeed with us in those moments just as she was present at the foot of the cross, at the “hour” of her Son’s death. The Blessed Virgin Mary has helped many saints in living out their baptismal calling and dying to self and being conformed to Christ, and she wants to help each one of us, too. Indeed, the aforementioned St. Louis de Montfort promoted true devotion to Mary as a means of death to self and of fidelity to our baptismal calling.

And this little gem Fr. Z’s Patristic Rosary Project which isn’t part of the Catholic Carnival at all but something I spotted on the sidebar of Legens and Cogitans.