Talitha Cumi

This song was written and performed by my friend Martin Doman and his sister Alicia Hernon. I sang it once with Alicia at the Boston Catholic Women's conference, and it's been on my mind over the past few days.

Matt and I went to adoration last night, and I spent the hour reading sections of the Imitation of Mary. Earlier in the day, I read the first reading of the day to Matt, which was from 1 Peter 1:3-9. The line I struggled with was "In this you rejoice, although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." I had told Matt that I couldn't understand who or why it was being proven; God knows that I love Him and believe in Him, He above all knows my heart and doesn't need to have it proven to know my faith. So if not for God, than for who? Or for what? Couldn't a miracle where the baby was not dead have served to glorify Him even more than this? I was searching for the whole point and I couldn't find it in reading the scripture or meditating on it.

So when we got to Adoration, I picked up the Imitation of Mary instead of the Bible, which is what I usually read in scripture. I skipped ahead to the sections on suffering and loss and God's inscrutable will. I didn't have a notebook with me to jot things down, but the main points which hit me was that love does not put limits on its proofs. That God might have eased the suffering of Mary through any number of miracles (for example, the flight into Egypt; He might have done so many things to stop to masacre of the innocents, and protect the Holy Family, but instead he allowed them to be persecuted and to have to flee to a place where they had nothing and no family). And above all, the crosses God calls us to bear which seem the hardest are the most important, because they are the ones which most show us his plan for us to be truly sanctified and holy. The words of Mary (well, of Mary through the writer. I'm not sure how they actually were handed down) say that if we feel these burdens are too overwhelming, that is when we should most rejoice for in them we know that God is calling us to a great, even supernatural, holiness.

None of these things are answers. It's not like reading these things allowed me to walk out of adoration and be at peace and compliant to the will of God. I still find myself saying "but why?" instead of "thy will be done" a thousand times a day. But these things do point me in a direction to head, where I might find a way to thank God for this and where I might be glad that this was how He planned things to be.