Sal-ve! Sal-ve!! Salve, Regina!!!

 

Around 6:30 pm tonight, I had dug out what leftovers we were going to finish off for dinner, then headed for the computer to check my e-mail. I found a reminder that today is a holy day of obligation, and realized we could still get to the 7:30 Mass. So I stuffed the leftovers back in the fridge, and we drove off to church. There were only a handful of the faithful there (the "remnant" acc. to the priest), but he was in a cheerful mood and invited us all up to the altar to make it more cozy.

I had been reading my way through the Catechism and had just finished one of the big sections on Mary. I was really disappointed to be reminded there that Mary is believed to be without "original sin." I want her to be just as human as the rest of us, otherwise her "yes" isn't quite as impressive for me. Nevertheless, my attitude about Marian devotion is undergoing a change. I've been rather Protestant about her for many years, but I've been doing some thinking about it lately. I even joined my parents in the Rosary with some thoughtfulness when I visited them last week. At any rate, it felt really good to belt out "Hail, Holy Queen" for the recessional tonight!

(Found this photo of a young Palestinian woman on Google. I bet Mary looked more like this than the usual paintings of fair-skinned, blue-eyed European women.)