To the Band of Brothers: January 13, 2021
Good morning!
There’s a little bottle of holy water from Lourdes sitting on my desk in my bedroom. Not holy water from Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, but from Lourdes, the little village in southern France. While I do not doubt the water fountains at Lourdes Academy flow with holy goodness every time one of the young women from the school leaves a class to take a sip, this Lourdes water is different.
The little vial that sits on my desk is filled with water siphoned from the famed spring in the grotto of Our Lady where millions of pilgrims flock every year. They are pilgrims that make their way over the Pyrenees Mountains to have a close encounter of the divine kind. For over 150 years it has been a hot spot for miracles and conversions because of the absolute powerful presence of the Blessed Mother.
The holy water bottle in my room was a gift from a very young couple, that pre-pandemic, visited the holy site on pilgrimage before their upcoming wedding. They had decided that one of the better ways to prepare for marriage was to go with their families to a holy place like Lourdes and place their love at the feet of Mary and ask her to bless them. They figured, and rightfully so, Mary knew a thing or two about love.
They were right for two reasons.
First, they were right because the love Mary shared with Joseph, her husband, was purer than the freshly driven snow that never makes its way down to the humid sweat camps of Miami and is currently wreaking havoc in the streets of Madrid. There must have been some serious communication going on between Joseph and Mary. I say that because they both understood perfectly well the vocation that each had been called to by God. They both were aware of each other’s role and understood how it served the greater good. They were both on the same page about the fact that everything in life was secondary to the will of God and the bundle of joy Mary birthed.
Second (and maybe more importantly), Mary knew something about love because she gave birth to him. For nine months she carried love in her womb. She bore love. Think about it. If we are to believe what John the Evangelist says in the fourth chapter of his first letter, that God is love (v.16), then Jesus, who is God, is also love. Jesus is the human manifestation of it. He is her Son and she is his Mother.
Mary knows it. You don’t have to go farther in explaining the fullness of this knowledge than the Cuban adage my mother would say to me whenever she forewarned me of a future mistake I was going to commit: te conozco porque te parí (I know you because I birthed you).
How often did my mother cut me off at the pass when I was about to ask her for something because, before a word was even formed on my lips, she knew it? How often did I place a glass of milk on a table or take a bowl of cereal to the couch and, as if looking into a crystal ball, she would say she saw it either falling or spilling? And she was right.
Yup, Mary knows. And as I sit here at the computer and raise this little splash of Lourdes water, I raise a toast to Mary, that we may know her Son and, therefore, know love. And, for the young couple who I married and gifted me the water from Lourdes, that they may know love and therefore know the Son.
Auspice Maria
BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain. The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline. In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty. The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow. Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.