Friends, Old and New

Maria Morera Johnson 2018
Maria Morera Johnson 2018

This weekend I spoke at a Magnificat prayer breakfast. I told my faith story, something I am more and more comfortable doing even though it is a changing story that grows and unfolds as I continue this walk with the Lord. It is inextricably bound to my relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary, too. Relationship, of course, is at the root of my experience.

I shared that I feel like the workers who came in at the end of the day and still received a full day’s wages (Matthew 20:1-16). I am grateful for a merciful God who knows my heart and wants me close. For too long, I lived a compartmentalized life, where I put church in a box to be opened only on Sundays, prayer set aside to be recited and checked off a list while the rest of the time I enjoyed the give and take of relationships with family and friends.

Over the weekend, I connected with good friends, women with whom I’ve worked in the new evangelization, women with whom I have much in common as we shared about our faith, our loves, disappointments, and joys that make up so much of our experience in mid-life. Women with whom I’ve shared a spiritual home in our parish for decades. And to my delight, women I reconnected with after many decades!

We talked for long hours, at lunch and over dinners, laughing joyfully through most of it, but also acknowledging our moments of pain and insecurity – allowing ourselves to become vulnerable for a moment. This give and take that I took for granted in my friendships over the years and learned to foster and appreciate in deeper spiritual friendships as I got older, was the missing element in my relationship with the Lord – it wasn’t relational.

I learned, through these friendships, how to open up, trust, share, and most of all, be present to the Lord – and most importantly, to just be in His presence. It didn’t happen overnight, but through the years I’ve learned to apply these gifts of friendship to my relationship with the Blessed Mother and Jesus. I’m grateful for the friends who have been bridgebuilders for me. Through their holy example so much like the examples of the saints, I’ve learned to respond to the most important relationship in my life, with the Lord.

I’m still learning. To be present. To be vulnerable. To be loved.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Trailer #2 Premieres

Are you excited about Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Christmas will come a little early for me, as the film premieres on December 15th! Tonight, we’ll see the premiere of the second trailer during half-time of Monday Night Football’s match-up between the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears.

I’ll be watching. There was a time when I was a big fan of the Purple Gang, probably because I had a crush on Donny Osmond and his favorite color was purple. Eventually, though, I had a bigger crush on Han Solo. And an even bigger fascination with the Star Wars saga. It was inevitable that I would write about characters that have influenced me or moved me in some way. So much so, that I feature Rey, the heroine of these last films, in Super Girls and Halos.

Stars Wars’ appeal to me, after the cool special effects, is in the story-telling. I love to see the epic battle of Good vs. Evil play out on the big screen. Although Lucas was often criticized for bad dialogue — as a kid I never noticed. As an adult, I didn’t care — the story is greater than a few cheesy lines here and there.

In The Force Awakens, we meet Rey and are treated to an update on our favorite characters from the first trilogy. I immediately loved Rey. She was fearless and daring, everything exciting about a heroine. Rey’s sense of justice prevails, and she is drawn into the Resistance to fight the evil of the First Order.

The enduring theme of the Star Wars films is the triumph of good over evil, the eternal battle of the light versus the dark sides of the Force on a galactic scale. The films also explore this theme on the smaller though no less epic scale of the individual human person. As Christians, we’re reminded that we must act, whether singly or in concert with others, according to God’s plan for salvation in our lives. (Super Girls and Halos p. 32)

Super GirlsRey represents, for me, the ultimate fictional heroine. Her commitment to justice in the galaxy drives her in The Force Awakens, and I have great hope for how she will use The Force in The Last Jedi through her training, and ultimately, in the battle against the evil in the First Order.

In Super Girls and Halos, I share my love of the saints and how they are excellent models of virtue. The Saints lived lives of heroic virtue, too. I pair Rey with St. Clare of Assisi as a beacon of strength and light, as I discuss the same virtue of justice in a canonized saint and heroine in her own right.

Check back here to see the new trailer.

 

Courageous Saints: St. Maria Goretti

pilgrimage logoI knelt in prayer less than a foot away from the relics of St. Maria Goretti, overwhelmed by the immensity of mercy from such a small child.

I’ve gone on my share of pilgrimages — some tinged with a little sadness, others so joyful I could barely stand it, but this pilgrimage to visit St. Maria Goretti touched me deeply in an unexpected way. I think it stirred my heart and challenged me unexpectedly.

Maria died a martyr’s death, murdered violently by a young man, Alessandro, who attempted to rape her. Her cries appealed to his soul, “It is a sin! God does not want it!” While the rape was thwarted, he fatally wounded her, stabbing eleven-year-old Maria over a dozen times. She survived into the next day, long enough to describe the scene with her assailant, Alessandro Serenelli, and to forgive him.

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Alessandro served a thirty-year prison sentence for the murder. Upon his release, he sought Maria’s mother, Assunta, to beg for forgiveness. She forgave him, explaining that she could not withhold what Maria had already freely given him. So many feels this morning as I knelt close to St. Maria’s remains!

How could Alessandro face Assunta? How could Assunta offer her forgiveness? It is, for me, the action of the Divine Mercy, Christ Himself, who forgives us and asks us to do the same.

A growing devotion to the Divine Mercy in recent years, a visit to Cuba and meeting Pope Francis, Missionary of Mercy, and now, venerating the relics of St Maria Goretti, on this Pilgrimage of Mercy, well…I am certain that I will be entering into the Year of Mercy with an open heart.

Read her entire story, including the amazing account of how both her mother, Assunta, and her assailant, Alessandro, attended her canonization: Pilgrimage of Mercy: St. Maria Goretti.

If you have a chance to visit this moving display, you owe it to yourself to go. If it didn’t come to your town or you missed it, I’d like to offer one of my readers the pair of holy cards distributed at the church. One card is a prayer for Alessandro Serenelli, and was touched to the letter he wrote to the world. The other card, of St. Maria Goretti, has a prayer and was touched to her relics, making it a third class relic.

Leave a comment if you’d like a chance to receive this lovely reminder of the gift of mercy. I’ll select the recipient on November 2nd with a random drawing.

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