"Morning Star Over America"

I am a staunch believer in the miraculous in general - I know the Almighty sets aside the laws of physics, the law of nature whenever it please Him to do so - but in particular?
Not so much.
I don't disbelieve them, Medjugorje, stigmatics, [is that the word?] intermittently liquefying blood, the Virgin Mary visiting Long Island.... but I am agnostic.
But an agnostic, or at least a thinking agnostic, by very definition is open to being convinced, and perhaps even, sometimes, eager to be convinced - at least one way or the other.
Has the Blessed Mother been appearing to two men in Illinois?
One might ask why would she? but might just as well ask why not?
In any case, Bishop Paprocki is just the man to depend on in determining the truth of the matter.

"I could hear a voice coming from outside me. It was a pleading voice from a very young girl. There was authority in her voice, even though it was very mild.”
...[Two] former Ashland residents who now live in Springfield, said they have been receiving visions of and messages from Mary — communications they recently turned over to Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Springfield Diocese for a commission to review.
Parsons-Heather and Roth said they have experienced visions, miraculous phenomenon, apparitions, prophetic knowledge and daily conversations with the Virgin Mary since February 1991.
“After the initial shock, she began teaching us about moral truth and what kind of people Jesus wishes us to become,” Roth said. “I don’t see mystical phenomena or miracles, per se, as something extraordinary or rare anymore. They accompany our faith. Many beautiful spiritual gifts become part of anyone’s life when we are consecrated in obedience to Jesus through his mother’s guidance.”
...“The purpose of the commission is to study the body of literature concerning what is referred to as the ‘Morning Star Over America’ in accord with the ‘Norms Regarding the Manner of Proceeding in the Discernment of Presumed Apparitions or Revelations,’ in order to express a judgment regarding the authenticity and supernatural character if the case so merits,” Paprocki said. “I would advise people to do nothing with the published ‘Morning Star Over America’ works until the commission yields a response.
“This is the only such request for the establishment of a commission to examine private revelations that I have had during my tenure as bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, which began in June 2010."
...  In 1989, [one of the men]  received a book about Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, and that inspired him to visit the holy site.
“It was probably the most profound experience of my life up to that time,” Roth said. “I had grown up being taught about our Holy Mother’s appearances at Fatima and Lourdes, and it struck me that it was happening right now, and I thought that we were very, very blessed to have an event like that happening.
“What I saw was the truth through the faith of the visionaries at Medjugorje. I became convinced that the power to change the world was through the Virgin Mary’s miraculous intercession. I knew it was the gift that the world had been waiting for.”

One might find the fact that the apparitions began after a pilgrimage to the location of another reputed Marian apparition makes them suspect, inspired by the power of suggestion, but what if we look at it another way?
What if we acknowledge the possibility that such things have happened over, and over again, are happening even now, are occurring constantly, to each and every human creature, if only he opens the eyes of his soul, the ears of his heart to recognize it?
It occurs to me that I may have been the potential recipient of mystical communication but having given it no thought, failed to so much as notice it.

Birders know that it takes practice and knowledge and awareness to take in all the sightings one could make.

I remember when I was involved in a wedding being planned, being shocked at how many gracious homes with charming gazebos in beautiful gardens there suddenly seemed to be.
Had they not been there before?
Had they sprung up overnight?
Do I think they weren't really there and I only thought I saw them through the power of suggestion?

"Leave Me the Hell Out of Your Out of Your Hellish Abomination"

I've been imagining conversation the Blessed Mother might be having lately.
It may be a touch irreverent, though not, i believe, as irreverent of invoking Mary in support of the killing of the preborn.
I can't believe she wouldn't have something to say about  this.
I know there are "seers' out there who profess to be delivering messages from the Virgin, have any of them weighed in?

when God chose Mary to become the mother of His Son, He did so not by force or compulsion but by invitation and request. Mary was free in deciding whether or not to conceive a child. Many women and girls do not enjoy such freedom.

"Leave me the Hell Out of Your Out of Your Hellish Abominations"

Of Waffles and Coincidence and the Hand of God

So.
Been looking for a pizzelle iron, for cheap, (because while I enjoy eating them, I may find I don't particularly like making them, and if I bought one retail, even on sale, there would be thirty-some bucks wasted, and I couldn't bear throwing it out, so it would take up space in my kitchen  WHICH  IS  AT  A  PREMIUM  for ever and ever and ever.)

Monday I had some items for the St Vincent De Paul Food Bank, and after I dropped them off, I dropped myself in to the thrift store, (it's a good time of year for NWT clothes, household goods, etc., as snowbirds decide impulse purchases are not worth packing up and transporting.)

There was a perfect, tiny electric waffle iron, which I thought might just do, for $5.

So, looking up recipes, today, what do I learn?

The Annunciation, or "Lady Day, to the Swedes, ("Vårfrudagen,") which was, because March 25 fell in Holy Week, unwontedly celebrated on April 4, this past Monday, is also, jokingly, "Waffle Day," ("Våffeldagen.")

Clearly, the Blessed Mother wants me to have waffle cookies.

Of course, she would! She loves us all and wants us to be happy!

Is Frodo the Virgin Mary?

On the way to Mass this morning, I had something on the radio, not sure what the program was, one voice, of several, I recognized as Scott Hahn. (They were having one of those "discussions" where everyone seems to already know what everyone else has thought of, and thoroughly agrees with it - more like a multi-voice lecture than anything else.)
They were discussing the "story" of the Nativity, and mentioned that the Hero, being a baby, is pretty passive, and it made me question: if we do approach the birth of Christ as a story, a drama, is He the hero of it?

Isn't the Blessed Mother? It is her fiat that sets the story in motion, or at least the part of the story that is open to human perception, the part that occurs in time and space and history, instead of unchangingly out of time and space and history.
And this girl alone is there from the beginning, from the angel's shocking announcement.
It is her willingness to make the journeys, some literal, some metaphorical; her willingness to suffer, a sword piercing her heart, as Simeon was to prophesy, for what for she alone of all human creatures bears no responsibility; her willingness to take on the appearance of transgressive behavior for which the punishment is death; her willingness to trust in the Lord with no assurances of how it all will end except that it is what He wills...

The small, seemingly insignificant character; essentially powerless, an onlooker might suppose; destined to be a supporting player at best in a story that would be of interest to anyone else... on whose shoulders the fate of all the earth rests?

Doesn't that pretty much describe both Blessed Mary Ever Virgin and the little hobbit?

"My Twelve-Star General"

My little, heavy, extremely cheap, and now awfully old tablet is the place from whence I observe Those Interwebs when I am travelling, so lots of doors portals are closed to me until I get home to reliable wifi and javascript and computer voodoo and other matters I cannot comprehend, Too Wonderful For Me, Far Too Lofty For Me to Reach.
So this did not escape my notice, but did escape my gaze until now.
A commentor or two is offended by it, by I think it's quite funny and pretty wonderful, and I'm getting warm fuzzies about Our Lady just now, so perhaps I fool myself, but I think she's enjoying such Catholic hijinx too.

Like, you may be cool, but you will never 

be star-crowned Mary standing on the moon

 stabbing a demon-serpent through the skull 

with a cross-shaped spear cool.

(I am left wondering exactly how a Catholic former Orthodox worships happily in the area where she seems to live, but many make sacrifices to belong to the OHCA... Sadly, the burden of the sacrifices one feels one makes liturgically actually fall on the entire Church, whether its members know it or not, and are even, sometimes, an affront to the Blessed Trinity, but I digress.)

If I were still in the dreamingaboutperfectweddings stage my neices are all in at the moment, I would think about what a kewl headpiece this could be for a bridal veil -

2. Our Lady of La Salette 

(or, Pretty Sure Our Lady Is Also an Elven 

Warrior Maiden,Probably Kicked Morgoth 

in the Shins)

The Crisis in Catechesis and Fraternizing With our Separated Brethren and the Pickle In Which Scelata Finds Her Self

Cardinal Burke says,

One of the biggest challenges is the defective catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church—I can speak from my experience in the United States—for the past 40 to 50 years. Children and young people are not well catechized with regard to marriage. pretty much everything having to do with the Faith.

Okay, His eminent Eminence didn't really say that, I of course edited  the end.

I have a delighful child in RelEd.
She never, but never shuts her mouth and has a question about every word I say, including "in", "and" and "the."
I love her, she's good-hearted, really funny, and inquisitive and she completely wears me out, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Here's the thing....

She's not in the local public, she's attending private school. Okay.

It's evangelical protestant. Okay.

She comes in every week with some new objection to Catholicism, clearly, (because I recognize the phrasing instantly,) taken straight from the Dont-Really-Know-Anything-About-Catholicism-Except-That-As-A-Good-Protestant-I-Hate-It playbook.

Why do we Catholics want to keep  Jesus on the cross?
Why do we worship Mary?

It seldom has anything to do with the intended lesson for the day but it needs to be addressed, and it neds to be addressed right then.
And it's hard, hella hard to make a point to a mouthy child of that age strong enough for it to stick, without her exaggerating it.

They said we make too much of a fuss about Mary, but I know she's just as good as Jesus.

Okay, Jessie, that's not quite it....

And of course, the fundagelical influence on one kid aside, everything needs to be repeated, oh... umptyleven thousand times for there to be a (holy) ghost of a chance of it sinking in and staying with them.

I explained once that she must be polite and obedient at school, but understand that her teachers may not quite "get" what we know as Catholics, and that for now, it might be better to avoid getting into it with them.
But the fact is, I don't know her parents, don't know her situation - for all I know, it's a mixed marriage. For all I know her parents may be completely uncatechized cultural Catholics.
For all I know they don't practice.

I'll have to talk to the DRE about this, and at very least - she can be my project for the year.

If not for the eyeliner...

.... wouldn't this haute couture bride bear more than a passing resemblance to any number of folk and art images of the Blessed Mother?

But now that I think of it, even the eyeliner isn't too much of a stretch -- there is a painting of the Theotokos in a Los Angeles Orthodox church (cathedral?) that is so OTT pretty, almost glam, that Himself and I referred to it "Mary's headshot."