THE KISS
Recently, a mate of mine asked my age. When I told him I was 63 he asked:
‘Have you celebrated your third 21st birthday yet?’
Clever.
I said, ‘I haven’t but will.’ My parents were not party animals, but knew how to have a good time – God rest their souls.
Pope Leo XIV celebrated the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary recently. He asked the question:
‘What must the birth of a baby girl have meant in the time of Joachim and Anne?’
We could start with Giotto's fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (c. 1305), depicting the kiss of Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate.
Marriage is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Full of joy and hope.
The birth of a baby is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Full of joy and hope.
The pope went on to cite St. Thomas of Villanova (1488-1555) who encourages the use of imagination when it comes to Mary:
Expand the boundaries of your understanding, and paint within the depths of your soul a young woman who is most pure, prudent, beautiful, devout, humble, meek, full of grace, rich in holiness, … utterly pleasing to God.
AMEN.
