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January 1, 2023: The Beauty of Mary's Holiness
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Do you have a favorite side food at a restaurant you enjoy? For example, if I eat at IHOP, I love the hash browns. If I eat at Wrights Chicken Farm, I love …. everything! If I chow down at Napoli’s, I love the bread that accompanies the meatballs that are falling out of the bread because of their size and quantity. There’s something wonderful about a side dish or a side portion of the meal making the main dish taste even better. In their own way, they enhance the main part of the meal, possibly even seen as an outgrowth of the main portion.
Do you have a side food with or before a main meal that reminds you of God’s generous grace, seen as a sign of how his love and presence will touch our lives in overflowing ways? I do pray that many, if not most or all of us, consider ourselves the recipients of many blessings bestowed upon us through God’s generous nature. All, of course, a sign of our Creator’s love for his creation. The one food that can potentially remind me of God’s generous nature, with the seed of holiness and goodness at the core, is the blooming onion made by Outback Steakhouse. Not only is it a delicious side dish before or with the main meal, but the blooming onion works well as an image that speaks to God’s generosity. For the holier the core of our souls, the more generous and wider are the graces of God.
Over my life I’ve heard some folks say about another person, “They’re rotten to the core.” I believe my mother used to say that about one or two former Presidents! If true, which God alone would know the answer to, although we at times can gain a sense of the truth of such a statement about this person or that, but if there is a good deal of truth to the person’s core (soul) being rotten, then true graces and blessings would be hard to come by. Not that God would refuse such a person generous graces and blessings, for God freely gave Paul of Tarsus the persecutor more than enough graces and blessings for many people after his being humbled on the road to Damascus. God can do whatever He wants to do, with whomever He wants to do it.
But chances are, if a person is truly rotten to the core, as some have said about others, then said person who is presumably rotten will be out of spiritual whack, not caring much about God’s generosity to them. If they receive apparent graces and blessings, like making lots of money through business or otherwise, or never seem to have any health problems, then said person who is apparently rotten to the core will take all the credit for their good fortune in life and not give thanks to God or anyone else for living on easy street – or the Life of Riley (!) - for years on end. Maybe this is because they truly are rotten to the core. If so, or if you know this person in your life, we must pray for their conversion before they die. Otherwise, chances rise exponentially they will not be living on easy street in the life that follows this one.
Either way, the blooming (or bloomin’) onion from Outback Steakhouse, as well as other foods in other restaurants that accompany the main dish, I would consider to be good at the core. Which is why they taste so good. I like this image for our faith lives as connected to God’s generous nature as related to the health and holiness of the core. The bloomin’ onion grows to the size it does because the core of the onion is healthy. And holy, if you will. If the core of any onion was rotten, unholy, or dead, and I’ve seen a few such onions, then the onion will not grow and expand into something beautiful to eat. A Georgia onion it will not become. Not only will it not reach it’s potential, but it will altogether lose its purpose, its essence. Remember the story of Jesus and the fig tree? Because of its lack of providing food for people, because of its deadness at the core, the Lord told the fig tree, to put it nicely, to shut down its branches forever and begone. That particular fig tree was almost treated like a demon by Jesus. “What, you don’t want to grow anymore fruit and be generous for my most prized creation to eat? You’re finished!” Our Lord was not interested in trying the “green thumb” approach. At least it’s hard to feel bad for a fig tree.
Our celebration this Sunday centers on someone who was perfect at the core. Mary, the Mother of God, was the healthiest and holiest “bloomin’ onion” God has created. The core of Mary’ soul, created at the moment of her Immaculate Conception, was a soul that grew for a lifetime through boundless graces and blessings bestowed by God Most High. What began at Mary’s Immaculate Conception would bloom into her perfect discipleship that allowed her to speak such words as “Do whatever he tells you,” while pointing to her Son.
Whereas some people may be rotten to the core – and God will make the final just judgement on this – Blessed Mary was perfectly holy and good to the core, thanks to how God favored the future Mother of his Son. Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception grew into other holy events in her life, such as the Annunciation, accepting into her womb the Source of Holiness Himself, Christ our Lord. Only a core (soul) that is filled with holiness and searches for holiness, and possesses the wisdom to clearly understand authentic holiness, can accept into their own bodies and souls the One who created holiness. Mary carried the Creator of heaven itself because her entire being was in perfect union with the God who created her. The same one and only God who has created us. Her “bloomin’ onion” expanded from her absence of original sin - thanks to God’s favor - to conceiving the Savior of the world because Mary was so perfectly beautiful at the core of her being. She was ripe for God to “do great things for her.” And through her, and with her. Just as the Lord desires to do the same with us.
I cannot imagine how much good potential is lost through the profanation of our present culture, where holiness is despised, because of the lack of authentic holiness at the core of human souls. Every person God has created has the potential to possess a good portion of Blessed Mary’s spirit. Yes, Our Lady held a distinct and unique advantage over us in her Immaculate Conception and protection from original sin. She was a shining light in God’s eyes from day one in the womb of her mother St. Anne. God had great plans for this female. And He was able to carry them through because Mary remained true to her inmost being, her soul. A soul that “rejoiced in God her savior.” But, aside of the Immaculate Conception, the Lord does not leave the rest of us behind in the holiness column of our lives. We have the potential to be as Mary was. He does not treat us like a dead fig tree. God sees us as his children. His sons and daughters. Children of the light. Children of the Light Who have overcome the darkness of a profane world.
Mary’s “bloomin’ onion” grew from her being the Immaculate Conception, to the Annunciation of conceiving the Son of God in her womb, to being the Mother of God (Theotokos), to her being carried home to heaven in her Assumption. How and why so? Because her core, her soul, was happy, healthy, and ready for God to do his work. The method does not change for the rest of us. Among many things, Our Blessed Mother teaches us the fundamental importance of possessing holiness at the core of our being. A nice thought to begin the New Year. Whenever our souls become corrupt, as they may over time, as Catholics we are blessed to unclutter the rottenness of our souls through the great Sacrament of Reconciliation. Confession makes our personal “bloomin’ onion” healthy at the core so that God can once again expand on the many graces and blessings he wishes to send our way. For when we are healthy at the core, and not participating in present ideologies and ways that fully contradict the holiness of God’s creation, then the Lord will accomplish through us the good things that reveal the Holy Spirit at work in us.
May 2023 be a year of learning, or re-learning, the meaning of the word holiness. Of authentic Christian holiness. And what must we do to possess and live holiness in our lives? Leave out much of what the present spiritually sick culture calls holy, which insults the God of creation. Come to a deeper understanding of what holiness truly is, and what it is not. What does holiness look like when manifested in our lives, and what the Devil is heaping on us that is truly rotten to the core. Pray for the wisdom to know the difference. Reject the bad, and choose the good in this New Year, making it a happy, healthy, and holy one.