Amazing Love

When you are expecting a new baby, everyone tells you about the instantaneous and amazing love you feel for the new baby, but until our little bundle arrived I could not even comprehend what they meant.  I heard what they were saying, but thought "I know what love is.  I love my husband, I love my family, it really can't be that different, can it?"  YES.  Yes it can be that different. From the instant I first laid my eyes on him, the love was so intense it was as if I had grown another heart to fit it all in. This love is ENORMOUS. Even still it is incomprehensible how someone I have known for so little time has planted himself firmly and forever in my heart. As if his blond hair, big blue eyes and teeny-tiny features were not enough to win me over, I am in awe of his person hood and completely smitten with who he is already.  He can't talk or even respond much more than with eye contact, but I have a sense of him -- his gentleness, his curiosity and wonder, his calm.  When he smiles, it melts my heart.  When he frowns or whimpers, my heart sinks and cracks a little.  How did this happen? How is it that I have become so completely intertwined with the life and emotions of this little tiny miracle?

This lent, we have been going to stations of the cross on Fridays. Since Nathaniel was born, all of the sudden I am aware of another's suffering during Christ's Passion--Mary's.   In station 4, when Jesus meets His mother and she must watch Him suffer and do nothing...BAM!  How vivid my imagining of her pain became.  I too now have a son, and to even think of him suffering even the slightest discomfort makes my heart hurt.  To think of Mary watching her son beaten, whipped, bloody, abused and carrying His cross is too much.  How?  How did she do it?  In the 13th station Mary cradles her dead son in her arms. What pain! What sorrow! What suffering!  Tears well up in my eyes as I imagine what it would be like to hold my own dead son.

In the version of The Stations of the Cross we are using the reflection and prayer are as follows:

Yes, My Mass is complete;
but not My mothers
and not yours,
My other self.
My mother still must cradle
in her arms
the lifeless body of the Son she bore.
You, too, must part from
those you love,
and grief will come to you.
In your bereavements think of this:
A multitude of souls were saved
by Marys sharing in My Calvary,
Your grief can also be
the price of souls.

Response 13

I beg You, Lord,
help me accept the partings that
must come­--
from friends who go away,
my children leaving home,
and most of all,
my dear ones
when You shall call them
to Yourself.
Then, give me grace to say:
As it has pleased You, Lord,
to take them home,
I bow to Your most holy will
And if by just one word
I might restore their lives
against Your will,
I would not speak.
Grant them eternal joy.

This hits home for me.  I have not yet been able to pray this reflection without crying.  I find myself wondering, if given the opportunity, would I not restore my son's life - even against God's will? I'd like to think I would be strong enough to resist the temptation but when I think of my sons eventual death fear and sadness tug at my heart and it aches in a way I have never felt before.  Oh Lord, give me the strength to love like you and the willingness to give back to you what is yours. Mary, mother of God pray for me, that in all trials and sufferings I may have trust in God and the strength to do what He asks.  How much God loves us, to have given up His only son, to suffer and die in this way.  I think it's really starting to sink in...

May God bless your lent and draw you ever nearer to Him.