Sept. 3, 2014 By Kristina Dean Last year during a vacation in South Carolina, I lost my then seven-year-old son Alex, just for an hour, on North Myrtle Beach. We heard warnings that five people had died that week due to strong undertow and dangerous waves. The life guards were very active that day, only allowing people to go into the surf up to their waists. So when Alex disappeared, I thought he'd drowned. It was agony, and I still carry the scars on my heart from that day. Eventually he was found two miles down, where he'd been walking, searching for his mom. He'd become disoriented coming out of the ocean and couldn't locate me. That hour haunts me in the quiet hours of the night when I can't sleep. If I close my eyes, I can feel it - the deep, immediate plunge into terror, and the absolute desperation, barely holding on so I didn't shatter. Immediately afterward, I remember wondering how our Blessed Mother Mary was able to keep from coming apart when her son was missing for three days. I could barely take 60 minutes. At some point in her life every mother experiences this fear, perhaps for just a moment when she loses track of him in the grocery store or tragically, perhaps longer. In doing so, mothers come close to the Blessed Mother through this mystery of the Rosary. We are called to be like Mary, and to live our lives through all the mysteries. This was one of the themes discussed during the Women of Grace retreat recently held at Wadhams Hall in Ogdensburg. Approximately 85 women attended the three-day retreat, listening to Johnette Benkovic, founder of the Women of Grace ministry and television host of the Women of Grace program on EWTN, as well as Bishop Terry LaValley and Father Mark R. Reilly, chaplain for the retreat. I especially recalled my experience with Alex when Father Reilly began his Saturday Mass homily by mentioning the panic Joseph and Mary must have felt during those three days when they searched for the young Jesus. This is one of the thoughts I carried away with me from the retreat, this closeness of mother and child, and of how my life as a mother and Woman of Grace ties into it. For many years, I lost my identity and much of my faith. I could not ascertain my role as a female within the Catholic Church. Before God's grace brought me back to the church, I in my ignorance, did not know what the role of women was, so I struggled to fit in and to find a place for myself. Look to Mary for an example, I was told. This made me angry. I thought, erroneously, that I was being compared to Mary, our Blessed Mother. I wondered how I could ever compare with her; how could any woman be like her? It was unfair, I thought, to hold her up as an example, when as a wife and mother, I could never aspire to be as sinless or as pure. Why even try when I could never be perfect? I had it all wrong. When we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, when we allow ourselves to follow the three main precepts of the Women of Grace ministry, which are trust, receptivity and surrender, we become more like Mary, and in doing so we find our role in our faith and in the church as women. It is an important role. Besides loving and praying, we must allow ourselves to be permeated with the Holy Spirit, and to bear Jesus within our hearts to others. We must live through the mysteries. It reminds me of sewing a garment; this is ironic considering I don't sew. But I've watched my grandmother make enough clothes to remember seeing her laying a paper pattern over cloth and cutting, using it later to sew something beautiful. If we lay the pattern of the Rosary against out lives, using it to cut a rough pattern, what we have left perhaps, if we are blessed, is like a rough-hewn image of the Blessed Mother. We are not born sinless, we are not always filled with the Holy Spirit, we are not always pure of heart and filled with love. But by applying the mysteries of the Rosary to our lives like a pattern, perhaps we can be closer to her, and through this, be closer to her Son. If we trust and surrender and say "yes" to the workings of the Holy Spirit in our lives, then we are like Mary when she gives her complete and utter fiat to the Lord. When we bear Jesus in our hearts to the lives of others, we are like Mary when she carries Him in her womb to our world. By following this pattern, we can grow in closeness to our Blessed Mother, who then brings us to her Son. Wherever Mary is, her Son is there as well. They cannot be separated. During his homily, Father Reilly discussed the Blessed Mother's closeness to her Son using Bell's Theorem. I understood that previously, it was thought most things are influenced by other things around them. Father demonstrated this by blowing at a candle. His breath caused the candle flame to flicker, and we could see one thing caused the other. This cause and effect happens no faster than the speed of light. But in Bell's Theorem, if you take two intimately united items, separate them, then stimulate the atoms of one, the other instantly reacts as well, faster than the speed of light no matter the distance between them. Father Reilly tied this idea to fetal microchimerism, where a baby's cells in utero pass through the placenta to the mother, and stay with her even after the baby is born. The mother continues to carry these cells with her for the rest of her life. And the same happens to the baby. Some of the mother's cells cross over into the baby and remain in the child for the rest of his/her life. Every child born contains some of the mother's cells, and every mother contains a part of every child ever conceived within her. A mother keeps her children close to her heart always, emotionally, spiritually, and according to microchimerism, physically. If every mother and child are this intimately connected, think of the ramifications. This blew my mind. I thought about all the times that I'd wake up instantly, seconds before my newborn began to cry. There were many times I just knew something was wrong with one of my children. A mother's intuition. The closeness between a mother and child. Pieces of all my children exists inside me, and I in them. They are always with me. And this is also true for our Blessed Mother and her Son. Imagine her suffering, seeing her Son dying on the cross. A piece of her, physically, was with him, and as He watched his mother suffer a piece of Him was with her. This creates a depth to this mystery that I previously hadn't thought existed. Again, my mind goes back to when my son, Alex, as a four-year-old had open heart surgery. Sitting there by his bedside, I suffered right along with him. How I longed to take his place! Mothers and their children are so intimately connected. And through this connection, through a mother's heart, I was experiencing in a very small way, some of that mystery. During those horrible moments when Alex was lost to me on that beach, I experienced something that is hard to talk about, let alone explain. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a precipice, teetering over it. I felt close to losing myself. But then something wonderful happened. In the midst of all that agony, fear and anxiety, I felt something. Physically, I was standing near the edge of an immense ocean, so large and huge. Spiritually, I felt in my inner heart that in a similar fashion I was near something else that was immense and huge, something inexplicably and indefinably strong and powerful. It was there for me upon which to draw strength. It was God's reassurance that I could find him when things became bad. It was a huge reassurance, and to be honest, the only thing that kept me functioning in that place. It was through living a piece of that particular mystery that this was revealed to me. Our Lord is always with us. Even in despairing, fearful moments. Through Mary, He remains with us, closely united. Everything in our lives is there to bring us closer to Christ, to make us into who He means for us to be. "The more we honor the Blessed Virgin, the more we honor Jesus Christ, because we honor Mary only that we may the more perfectly honor Jesus, since we go to her only as he way by which we are to find the end we are seeking, which is Jesus." St. Louis De Montfort
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Among the 85 retreatants were Marti Armstrong, Poughkeepsie; Valerie Pachla, Schroon Lake; and Linda Pierson, Brownville.
