The Family Foundation School Catholic Community Bulletin
Pauca Verba (a few words)
While we are at school we live in an especially beautiful part of the country. Some of us come from states or even other countries where the leaves don’t change colors at all, or perhaps not as intensely as here – or where the leaves don’t fall each autumn. It is said that a large maple tree, after turning bright orange, can drop hundreds of thousands of leaves.
We might pay attention to this annual event as we watch the hills surrounding us turn colors and then within a few days, as the leaves fall, turn shades of gray until the spring.
What can this mean for us? Perhaps to simply remember the expression, “Just drop it.” We so burden ourselves and others by all that we carry around with us emotionally. Just drop it. Like the maple tree dropping the leaves: I might drop the petty resentments I carry. I might drop the sarcasm that hurts feelings around here. I might drop the visions of grandeur I carry around (thinking or acting as if I’m bigger and better than I am.)
This might be a good time of year to drop my angry mask, moody way, punishing behavior, my “I refuse to do anything around here” mode. Drop the old sound.
You name it!
Everyone around here is brainwashed…
So and so hates me….
I can’t learn with this teacher…
I hate Spanish….
This place is all wrong for me….
That kid is out to screw me over…
I don’t believe in God….
Prayer doesn’t work…
Life sucks…
Poor me…No one loves me…
Everything would be fine if I were home…
I’m fine just the way I am…
I was happy before I came here…
Learn a lesson from the autumn trees – “Just drop it!”
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If you’re reading this bulletin, chances are you share at Mass twice each week – Wednesday and Sunday mornings. Maybe you receive Holy Communion then. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lourdes in France. Bernadette was the young visionary. The story is told very beautifully in the book The Woman Clothed With The Sun. We have it in our library.
Bernadette was sickly much of her life and suffered terribly at the hands of people who disbelieved that she had seen anything, let alone the Mother of God. Bernadette left us a prayer which she had personally composed. It holds some of her most deeply held thoughts and feelings.
O Jesus, give me the bread of humility…
The bread of obedience…
The bread of charity…
The bread of strength to break my will
And to mould it into yours.
She wrote: I was nothing, and from this nothing Jesus made something great. Yes, I am in some way sharing in divinity by Holy Communion.
Bernadette died of tuberculosis. In her final hours, she said, “I am ground like a grain of wheat.” It is an allusion to the Eucharist – the Bread of Life which is the Body of Christ given up for us.
I might think of this being “ground up like wheat” the next time I’m feeling as if I don’t have much left to give, or when someone is draining me of patience, when my sense of humor is tested, when it’s the end of the day and my energy is waning.
