A cleaning binge has commenced. I have learned that clearing a single shelf counts as success, don’t look at the other shelves – focus on the one you are cleaning. I can be ruthless when cleaning, large dark trash bags are my friends. Ruthless till I lay hands on vases and containers saved from Justin’s funeral flowers. I grab one to put it in the “give away box”, it is seamed glass, common florist vase…but not yet, I slide it back on the shelf. Time to move away from this location and focus on a different area.
Cleaning extends to our “cyber” closets these days also, old files, old emails. I scroll down through my emails and hit the ones from two years ago. Justin used to email me a couple of times of week at least. Interesting tidbits on his research, what the Pope was up to, current topics in politics, the church. We could romp through a dozen topics, I miss his quick and agile mind, his generous gift of self and time.
I came to an email he sent me two years ago today, August 27, 2010 – a month before he died. This email had “Daughter Zion” as the subject line. He had not included any note or salutation, just what appears below:
From the last two pages of Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Daughter Zion”:
“One more remark in conclusion: Luke recounts in the story of Mary’s
visit to Elizabeth that when Mary’s greeting rang out John ‘leaped for
joy in his mother’s womb’. To express that joy he employs the same
word σκιρτᾶν (leap) that he used to express the joy of those to whom
the beatitudes are addressed. (Lk 6:23). This word also appears in one
of the old Greek translations of the Old Testament to describe David’s
dance before the Ark of the Covenant after it had returned
home…something is expressed here that has been almost entirely lost
in our century and nonetheless belongs to the heart of faith;
essential to it is the joy in the Word become man, the dance before
the Ark of the Covenant, in self-forgetful happiness, by one who has
recognized God’s salvific nearness. Only against this background can
Marian devotion be comprehended. Transcending all problems, Marian devotion is the rapture of joy over the true, indestructible Israel; it is a blissful entering into the joy of the Magnificat and thereby it is the praise of him to whom the daughter Zion owes her whole self and whom she bears, the true, incorruptible, indestructible Ark of the Covenant.”
I read it again this morning and remembered why he had sent this excerpt to me from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, book, “Daughter Zion”, Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief. I had shared with him that it had been mentioned that praying the Rosary before Mass was not appropriate preparation for the Mass. I remember him snorting, and saying that the whole focus of the Rosary was Christological…..he had such a good memory, he could instantly pull out quotes and readings. He could remember which professor said what and would go and find it in his notes. He could be quite animated and I loved to hear the fire in his voice, he always managed to be charitable, but direct.
I was so touched and humbled that he took the time out of his busy schedule to type and send me the text above, I remember reading it two years ago and drawing comfort and joy from what was ardently expressed in so few words. I marveled that with everything Justin was doing, he had managed to read so much and who he managed to read. I made a mental note to get a copy of “Daughter Zion” so that I could read it also, Justin had said that it was short and shouldn’t be missed. He kept his books so clean, I write in mine, highlight, scribble, underline – I knew I needed to get my own copy. Just weeks later he was dead and I was holding his copy to my chest, hugging it like it was him. Turning to the back to read again what he had shared with me just weeks ago.
Justin was quiet in his devotion to the Blessed Mother, but his books, quotes from his journal, and his gentleness reveal an inner facet of his life, they reveal a rich interior life. I think back to when he was recovering from the many surgeries he had, the nights when he couldn’t sleep, recovery was not always easy, I would come down and lay on the love seat – he would be on the couch – and I would pray the rosary till he fell asleep.
I miss connecting with him on so many levels, spiritually, intellectually, I miss being a sharer in the fruit of his interior life. For all his gentleness, there was a grit to him, a steely determination to challenge himself, to dream a dream bigger than what seemed possible. I am not sure we were the ones who gave him that spirit, I believe it was his other Mother, the Blessed Mother. He took to heart what John Paul II wrote in his Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae,
“With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.”
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
