***<\/p>\n
The day before, I went to the funeral home to look on my mother\u2019s body one last time\u2014a debt I owed the one who had borne me. I found myself stopping just inside the door, rooted in place by the room\u2019s absolute stillness, the sweet scent of flowers not quite masking the odor of decay, the conviction that I was utterly alone. I could not see my mother\u2019s body from where I stood, only the stark oblong of gleaming wood, a thin delineation of white satin around the top like an old-fashioned chalk outline at a murder scene.<\/p>\n
Only when I stood over the casket did I see how small she had become in death\u2014the size of a twelve-year-old girl, no more, no less.<\/p>\n
Ten\u00eda las manos cruzadas a la altura de la cintura, el rostro antinaturalmente liso y sin arrugas, y una boca que no era la suya. Cuando me arm\u00e9 de valor para tocarle la mejilla, su piel era fr\u00eda como el m\u00e1rmol e igual de inflexible. Le acarici\u00e9 el pelo porque, de todas sus partes, era la que sent\u00eda igual.<\/p>\n
It is a poet\u2019s fancy and a preacher\u2019s charity to call death sleep. It is nothing so natural but an absence, a lack. Call that which is gone anima <\/em>o lo que quieras. S\u00f3lo s\u00e9 que cuando la toqu\u00e9, ella no estaba all\u00ed.<\/p>\n Michaelangelo\u2019s Piet\u00e0\u2014the one in St. Peter\u2019s, Rome\u2014is a beautiful lie. Mary and her son are young, flawless, the man but sleeping in her lap. It is an image of what we wish to see, not what is.<\/p>\n Michaelangelo\u2019s late, unfinished, Rondanini Piet\u00e0 is nearer the truth; an aged crone straining to hold a weight that is forever slipping earthward.<\/p>\n Gravitas<\/em><\/p>\n Como madre joven, Elizabeth Ann Seton baj\u00f3 a sus beb\u00e9s tiernamente a sus cunas, con el peso de sus cuerpos ligeros; como madre viuda, sostuvo a sus hijas moribundas en sus brazos y luego vio c\u00f3mo las bajaban a la tierra.<\/p>\n Before burial those small coffins would have been placed before the altar in the tiny chapel in St. Joseph\u2019s House, the altar that Elizabeth commissioned to be carved in the shape of a manger, the Christ Child\u2019s first cradle.<\/p>\n Rezando por sus hijas que yac\u00edan tan quietas en sus ata\u00fades, \u00bfrecordaba su madre cuando las amamantaba a sus pechos? \u00bfEstaba tan aturdida como yo por la transformaci\u00f3n en absoluta quietud de esos cuerpos que hab\u00edan sido c\u00e1lidos, ligeros y r\u00e1pidos, esas manos ahora inm\u00f3viles que hab\u00edan arrancado el corpi\u00f1o de su vestido? \u00bfPens\u00f3 en Mar\u00eda, la Madre de los Dolores, que una vez contempl\u00f3 el cuerpo de su Hijo, tal vez suplic\u00e1ndole que resucitara como hab\u00eda resucitado a su amigo L\u00e1zaro?<\/p>\n \u00bfRog\u00f3 tambi\u00e9n Isabel para que resucitara a sus hijas como hab\u00eda resucitado a la hija de Jairo, de doce a\u00f1os?<\/p>\n In her spiritual writings shortly before her eldest daughter, Anna Maria, died, she refers to the infant Jesus as \u201cChild of Calvary.\u201d The cradle is also the coffin; birth also death. And vice versa.<\/p>\n In a remarkable act of trust, Elizabeth referred to the death dates of her daughters as their \u201cHeavenly birthdays\u201d\u2014the day when they were born into eternal life after the long, hard labor of dying.<\/p>\n Stroking my mother\u2019s hair as I had done three months before on my last visit when she was alive, the best I could do was acknowledge that her sufferings were now past, that the cruelty of Parkinson\u2019s that had inexorably entombed her in a body that would not obey her commands, now had no dominion over her.\u00a0 It was as if death had been her cure, the miracle I had been praying for all along.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Step by careful step we carried the body of my mother to the church and laid her down on the catafalque before the altar, the same altar where I had received my First Holy Communion and the chrism of confirmation, where my grandparents had received the Host, where the last time the remnants of my family attended Mass was on Palm Sunday, 2014, when my uncle, my mother\u2019s brother, was still alive.<\/p>\n Durante la misa de R\u00e9quiem, mantuve la mano sobre su ata\u00fad.<\/p>\n Despu\u00e9s del servicio, la sacamos, la carga no era m\u00e1s ligera pero esta vez yo estaba preparado para soportar el peso.<\/p>\n Pondus meum amor meus. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMy weight is my love.\u201d (St. Augustine.)<\/p>\n RIP<\/strong><\/p>\n Marie Patricia Phelps<\/p>\n 1934 – 2022<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Suzanne M. Wolfe<\/strong> creci\u00f3 en Manchester, Inglaterra, y se licenci\u00f3 en Literatura Inglesa en Oxford, donde fue cofundadora de la C.S. Lewis Society. Fue escritora residente en la Seattle Pacific University, donde ense\u00f1\u00f3 literatura y escritura creativa durante casi dos d\u00e9cadas. Wolfe es autora de cuatro novelas: El curso de todos los tesoros (Crooked Lane, 2020), Un asesinato con cualquier nombre (Crooked Lane, 2018),\u00a0Las confesiones de X<\/a>\u00a0(HarperCollins\/Nelson, 2016, ganador del premio Christianity Today Book of the Year), y\u00a0Desvelando<\/a>\u00a0(Paraclete Press, 2004; edici\u00f3n revisada, 2018, ganadora del Award of Merit de los premios Christianity Today Book of the Year). Ella y su marido, Greg Wolfe, son coautores de numerosos libros sobre literatura y oraci\u00f3n, entre ellos\u00a0Libros que forjan el car\u00e1cter: c\u00f3mo ense\u00f1ar a su hijo valores morales a trav\u00e9s de los cuentos<\/a>\u00a0(con William Kirk Kilpatrick, Simon & Schuster, 1994), y Bless This House: Prayers For Children and Families (Jossey-Bass, 2004). Sus ensayos y entradas de blog han aparecido en Convivium y otras publicaciones. Ella y su marido tienen cuatro hijos adultos y tres nietos.<\/em><\/p>\n Image at top: Michaelangelo, Rondanini Piet\u00e0. Wikicommons.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" En un notable acto de confianza, Elizabeth Seton se refiri\u00f3 a las fechas de defunci\u00f3n de sus hijas como sus \"cumplea\u00f1os celestiales\", el d\u00eda en que nac\u00edan a la vida eterna tras el largo y duro trabajo de morir. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":125446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[4187],"tags":[4224,3666,4225,4226,3653],"class_list":["post-125442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seton-culture","tag-michelangelo","tag-mother-seton","tag-pieta","tag-rondanini-pieta","tag-saint-elizabeth-ann-seton"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/setonshrine.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/sw-mass-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\n