Our Mother's sorrow

[Trishie]

The grieving heart​

Dear Mother Mary, please comfort each grieving heart in the waves of pain that frequently engulf it. Sustain it when dark mourning closes out all light of comfort and hope, and when prayer seems no longer possible. Obtain the gentle understanding and warm companionship of others to nurture the stricken heart and lead it towards hope and new life. Sustain it with faith and bring it to true generosity of spirit even in its sorrow.

You deeply experienced the laceration of suffering and bereavement, Mother. It entered and filled your Son’s life, piercing your soul, echoing through all your years.

You watched your beloved Child follow a path that led to His earthly annihilation. Grieving, you were powerless to murmur or to prevent Him who must be about His divine Father’s affairs. You suffered, prayed, and loved in silent faith, as so many parents must.

Like innumerable mothers (parents)throughout the ages, you watched with anguish the struggling progress of your Son’s destiny, amid rising danger of circumstance and others’ opposition. Finally, you beheld as others’ selfishness, unbelief, ambition, fear and pride, destroyed Him who only loved them and sought their salvation.

He hung there, your boy, cruelly nailed, struggling for breath and faith. You helplessly watched life drain from His pure, loved body as His struggle deepened in pain, fever and weakness. You would have protected Him whom you loved in excruciating intensity, but you could never choose to betray the divine intention that entrusted Him to you. “Your will be done!” your being replied endlessly with His to the divine Father.

Have pity on the anguished helplessness issuing from inability to alleviate the sufferings of dear ones. Mother crucified of heart, as we suffer with our dear ones’ pain and grief, and our terrible loss, please obtain for us such courage, obedience and selflessness as your own and His, so that the highest will of divine love shall be fulfilled in each of our lives.

Mother have pity on that terrible grief, that chasm of loss, the emptiness that stretches before the bereaved as they embrace their dead (or behold their broken families) in their desolate hearts, as you have done. Let them find hope in Your dead Son’s resurrection even when their hearts are still frozen with grief.

Thank you, dear Mother.

(from a handful of wildflowers’)

 

[powerandglory]

Is this from a book? I couldn’t find anything by that title but I really like it.

 

[Trishie]

You wont, I’m sorry. It’s just what I call my journal
I call it “A Handul of Wildflowers” in memory of small ‘gifts of love’ offered by my three young sons.

"Like many young children, my boys enthusiastically offered me handfuls of weed-flowers such as clover flowers or dandelions. Such weed-flowers are seldom prized, but like innumerable mothers throughout the ages, I smilingly received and displayed their small gifts for the love that they signified.

Yet a gift or an offering, however lovingly or sincerely offered, is not always welcome. Several years ago, during a picnic in a peaceful forest near Sydney, I observed a young child offer her mother a handful of white Flannel Flowers—charming Australian wildflowers—that she had gathered for her. The mother rejected them abruptly, saying, “Why would I want those?” The child’s expectant face blanked in disappointment. The mother, who above all others should treasure her child’s gift of love regardless of its value, had rejected it.

Like a child’s proffered handful of wild-or-weed-flowers, I humbly intend my writings as little gifts to God.
Peter—the disciple chosen to lead the Church after the resurrection of Jesus—taught us that gifts are to be shared with others in the community. (Peter 1, 4: 10-12) Peter’s words lead me occasionally to tentatively share ‘ a handful of wildflowers’ . Though I am flawed, and overshadowed by greater, more productive souls, I hope that God may gently welcome my gifts. Who knows if someday, of my writings or of my unremarkable life, God may say, “You are my servant…in whom I shall be glorified” “while I was thinking: I have toiled in vain.” [Isaiah 49, 3-4]

Although my ‘weed-flowers’ may have little value for others, perhaps my writings reflect something of our Australian bushland. Wandering amongst familiar eucalypts, sheltering lizards and birds that dart around its untidy and sometimes stark beauty, one may glimpse a family of kangaroos or emus watchfully grazing. Perhaps, in peering closely amid the leafy tangle of twigs, grass and stones, one may observe an occasional small wildflower. Close observation of my writings may likewise reveal some small insight that may encourage or enrich another’s heart.

(and that’s why I sometimes post a few of them in CAF. Just in case)

 

[Greenfields]

All for the greater glory of God,it is wonderful that you can share them with us Tonight at the Last Supper mass,our priest talked of sharing our gifts and talents.