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"Blessed is she who believed." - Luke 1:45
She Was
Truly Here
Venice,
the most improbable and magnificent city in the world, built on wood pilings in
a lagoon, rising from the water by what appears to be a combination of
engineering and miracle, has always been a city of relics. The great Basilica
of San Marco was built around the bones of the Evangelist, carried secretly
from Alexandria in the ninth century. Venice knew that sacred objects anchor
sacred stories. To touch what the saints touched is to touch, however faintly,
the life they lived.
On this feast, Venice honored portions of Our Lady's veil and other relics
associated with her earthly life, cloth said to have been worn by Mary,
preserved across centuries by hands that loved her. Such relics were among the
most precious objects in medieval Christendom. Not because they were magical,
but because they meant something profound: she was real. She wore clothes. She
touched things. She walked on actual ground.
The Incarnation has a material dimension that we must not spiritualize away.
God became flesh. Mary's body carried that flesh. The things she touched were
touched by a woman who had held God in her arms. Of course, the faithful wanted
to be near them.
The veneration of relics is, at its heart, an act of love. We keep what
belonged to the people we love. Venice kept what it could of the woman it loved
most.
Today's Gospel - Mark 10:46-52
Blind
Bartimaeus sat by the road calling out for Jesus. The crowd tried to silence
him. He called louder. Jesus stopped, called him forward, and asked: "What
do you want me to do for you?" Bartimaeus answered: "Master, I want
to see."
He wanted to see. And he received his sight. And the first thing he saw was
Jesus.
The relics of Our Lady are a call to see, to see her as real, as present, as
the woman who actually lived and breathed and walked and prayed. Not a symbol
or a theological concept but a person. Bartimaeus wanted to see. He called loud
enough to be heard. He received what he asked for.
What do you want to see today? Ask. Call out if you must. She is listening.
A Prayer
Our
Lady, whose relics have been carried across seas and preserved through
centuries by hands that loved you, thank you for being real.
Thank you for being a woman who walked and worked and prayed. Thank you for
having a body, for wearing clothes, for touching things that people then kept
because they could not bear to let go of what had been near you.
Remind us that our bodies matter, our physical lives matter, and the material world
matters. You sanctified it by living in it. Help us to live in it with the same
grace, the same reverence, the same awareness that ordinary things can carry
extraordinary holiness.
Our Lady, truly present, pray for us. Amen.
Reflection
Bartimaeus
called out until Jesus stopped. The crowd tried to hush him, and he called
louder.
Is there something you have been praying for quietly, politely, almost
apologetically, when what you actually need to do is call out louder? What
would it look like today to pray with the urgent persistence of a blind man who
refuses to be silenced?
Rosary Man Jim 🌹
Freely given. Freely shared.
