Our Lady's Lamp

Remember that typology stuff I was talking about? I already mentioned there that Jesus is the new Adam. But if Jesus is the new Adam, as Paul tells us, then who is the new Eve? Mary, of course! No other woman was with Him at the beginning and stayed with Him until the end. But do we  need  a New Eve, you may ask? Well, here is what some of the Early Church Fathers and more modern theologians have said. "Christ was born of a woman so that just as death came through a woman, so through Mary, life might return." ~St. Peter Chrysologus "Jesus became man by the Virgin so that the course of which was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the agency of the serpent might be also the very course by which it could be put down. Eve...conceived the word of the serpent and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the...

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others." -Marianne Williamson When Mary was approached by the Archangel Gabriel and was greeted as a queen, she was troubled by his greeting. He told her not to be afraid – possibly of him, but also po...

March 25, nine months before December 25, is the Feast of the Assumption. Christ did not begin his time on earth as a human at Christmas but when he entered the womb of Mary. It was then that “the Word became Flesh” (John 1:14), for life does not start at birth but at conception. One of the great geniuses of the way the Church Calender is set up is that this falls just before Passion week and Easter. To truly understand the upcoming events, the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord, we must understand – at least in part – the Incarnation. This was prophesied by Isaiah and heralded by an angel (Luke 2:26-38). God, the creator of all things, of the world, the animals, the plants, the angels, and us humans, to redeem us from our own sins and failures, left his glory and took up his residence in the womb of a young girl. This would have been very poignant to the Jews. For the first time since the losing of the Ark, the physical presence of God was with them. Without...

(I wrote this last night just before I went to bed.) We have 5 cats, and invariably, at least one or two of them will choose my room to sleep in, and often my bed as well. Tonight is no different. I have Ava and Rufus sleeping on my bed.... right where I want to put my feet. I, mildly annoyed, mildly amused, asked a friend why cats always choose the most inconvenient places to sleep and then get annoyed when we try to move them. And then I stopped and wondered if God ever thinks that about us. Do we often curl up to sleep in places that, while they look good, really aren't? I mean, we have the fuzzy blankets, the places we – or someone else – already made warm, we have someone to cuddle with... we have everything we could want. Why on earth would we want to be woken up and moved to a different place that's cold and not as comfortable? Why on earth would we want to move off of the warm laptop to the cold pillow? Well, maybe God wants us to move so that He can put His feet the...