Our Lady of Joyful Surprises, Our Lady Cause of Our Joy

Maria autem conservabat omnia verba haec conferens in corde suo.
"But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart." - Luke 2:19

. . . et mater eius conservabat omnia verba haec in corde suo.
". . . and His mother kept all these words in her heart." - Luke 2:51

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I am finding my consolation in our Mother Mary today. I have been waking with sadness because I can't remember so much, but today I realized the truth I have been groping for this past week:

Our Lady, Cause of our Joy, is also Our Lady of Joyful Surprises, and just when I am ready to throw in the towel, she rouses me for another round, supplying me with sustaining truth - or better yet Sustaining Truth. 

I had been thinking yesterday what I had often thought to console myself: that all this beauty I forget will be returned to me in Heaven - I will remember in exact detail the gifts from His hand, the people I love and all they said and did. But in the wake of The Most Glorious and Happy Day of our lives, i.e. The Wedding of the Century, this was a small consolation. How could I keep it all in my heart and mind NOW?

I don't think I can, but Our Lady, our beautiful Blessed Mother can and does. She is the Seat of Wisdom, and Wisdom requires Memory. But more to the point, she is the seat of Wisdom because Wisdom, that is God, sits in her lap, and He certainly doesn't forget anything (unless it be our sins when we cast them into His mercy).

Lately when I haven't been preparing for The Wedding, rejoicing in The Wedding, enjoying the aftermath of the Wedding, or mourning my inability to possess The Wedding completely in my heart and mind, memory and imagination, I have been delighting in the picture above of The Virgin and Child Embracing, and I have a new image of it because it appears on the cover of a new to me Christmas-tide book by the beloved Colettine Poor Clare, Mother Mary Francis. 

The book is Cause of Our Joy, and the painting is by Giovanni Battista Salvi di Sassoferrato (known as Sassoferrato, the town of his beginnings). Come to find out that Sassoferrato is also the artist who gave me (through the triple charity of my happy twin and her older sister and brother-in-law) a favorite image of Mary I have treasured for 41 years now: The Virgin in Prayer (pictured at the tippy top of this post).

I couldn't resist adding two more images by Sassy, just to complete the sequence. We began with The Virgin in Prayer: Our Lady as she was just prior to the appearance of Gabriel and his world-shattering announcement and invitation (and her resounding YES!) . . . then see the fruit of God's mercy and its Incarnation in her arms . . . then rejoice in the Virgin and Child Embracing . . . and at last we find Our Lady as St. Luke describes her: the Madonna with the Christ Child, which I prefer to call "Madonna reflecting on the Word made flesh."

Since I am myself reflecting (or musing, as we call it here, not able to take ourselves too seriously since like Marcel we're not usually too serious, and when we are, it's time to lighten up) on my forgetfulness, I'd like to add that I was reminded by these images - or rather by the information I found with these images when searching for them online so I could share them with you - that to my utter Joyful Surprise about twelve and a half months ago (December 2023), I SAW the originals IN PERSON in the National Gallery in London!!! Oops, I forgot!

I even bought there a nifty 3-D image of the Virgin and Child Embracing, and it sat on my kitchen counter most of the year. I think I recently gave it away, because what fun is a treasured possession until we part with it and make room for The Real Treasure? But no matter, it was given back to me last week when my Armenian brother let me take (little thief that I am, in imitation of our sister St. Therese) the book that boasted Sassy's wonderful painting on its cover.

All of which is merely to say Thank You Blessed Mother! You were so good at everything I try and fail at, but you don't keep anything for yourself, you give it all to us! Thank you for remembering everything. Please keep The Wedding in your heart and I will know it is safe there. I will get it from you in Heaven if not before, and when I glimpse it in part here below, please fill me with the gratitude that is so much more precious than my silly regret at my Marcellian forgetfulness.

Best Joy from this awesome Lady of Joyful Surprises? I expected it, and yet it is hard to grasp, hard to believe, but truly it happened:

One week ago today, as I write, my dear FDIL became a plain old pickle (DIL) and I have now transformed from FMIL to your basic run of the mill MIL. The happy couple are hitched for life, and to my world's rejoicing (and mine), I have a daughter at long last! God and our Blessed Mother have once again done their work, happily ever after is unfolding, and we ask that the pages be many . . .

Thank you to all who prayed, all who could participate in person, all who helped with the seemingly endless details which so sweetly ended in a pre-wedding welcome, a Nuptial Mass, and a wedding reception that surpassed our wildest and most extravagantly joyful dreams. Joy, joy, joy, as befits a couple so devoted to Our Lady of Joyful Surprises. May our Mother Mary continue to surprise them with joy for as long as they both shall live in this land of exile sweetened by their union with each other and the Blessed Trinity, and may their Heaven (both in Heaven and on earth) be spent snuggled near their sweet Mother embracing her Child.

Draw me; we will run!