Life is an adventure

The big event of my week was a weather event.  Monday was the feast of the Assumption.  So off I went to the cathedral for the annual mass in honor of our patron, the Assumption of Mary.  Mass began at 5pm.  As usual, it was led by the cardinal who only preached for 20 minutes.  It is a grand event and is one church thing I go to every year.

During mass, it started to rain which turned out to be a series of major, tropical storms that went on for at least four hours.  This meant that getting home was an adventure.  Another Australian, I know from Sunday mass, was there.  So we ganged up and went to the bus stop near the cathedral during a break in the rain.  It was only a break. So when I got to my stop from where I take another bus home, it was surely raining again, and it rained and it rained.  I was stuck under shelter for an hour watching pelting rain and flooding streets.  What to do?  As I had been to mass, I had my good shoes on, and so I could not venture out as they would be ruined in the water.     

I decided on Plan B.  Get to another spot by skytrain, from where I could get a taxi in a street that would not be flooding.  Good idea?  But it was still raining and no taxi was coming forth on this major road.  So I bit the bullet.  When the rain finally eased a bit, I got on a motorbike taxi which took me home.  Finally, home!  It took me two and a half hours from the cathedral to get home.  The motorbike ride through my flooded street was an adventure.  I could not have walked in that water, dirty and 15cms high.  

My story of the week.  

I share here the central part of my last weekly email to my sister back home. Life is an adventure, because it is a struggle.  Still struggle is not the end, as there is always a way ahead.  Such was the core of my message to my sister.  

At this time, a central part of my struggle is how I explain things that matter to me, to others who matter in my life.  Before me, at this time of the year, is the challenge of how I share with my faith community my strongly felt attachment to Mary as my mother.  Is my experienced sense of Mary as my mother foolish or childish or just emotional?  

So how do I explain it so as to give this relationship the credibility it deserves?  Do I need to explain it?  Yes, in some way, I do as this cannot be seen as either magic or superstition.  An explanation is demanded so as to give justice to a central relationship of our faith, a relationship of true and real love.  Hang on!  Not explanation!  I do not strive to explain but to share, for my challenge arises out of who we are as church, and so we encounter and share in faith.  

As I grapple with this challenge, it strikes me that I can share my life experience that brings me to my relationship with Mary.  I can share about my parents and their own love and faith that have brought me to where I am.  Maybe that is all I need to do as I cannot ultimately define it, nor is that possible nor needed.  

Mystery is the key word yet again.  Mary is real at deep and real levels, a part of my life.  That is enough.  Pope Paul VI put it another way, when consecrating the church of Our Lady of the Lake, near Castel Gondolfo, on 15 August, 1977.  He said:

"To create the Church, the Lord created a mother, the mother of Christ, and gave to Mary the glory and the humility necessary for a task of this nature, of this magnitude.  It is a mystery that is so close to us, that speaks to the soul of each one of us because Our Lady is our mother."