As you searched for your Child
who had wandered in Jerusalem,
as the Lord seeks after
lost coin and lamb,
O Mother and soul-guide,
rummage now through history's losses
escorting us through darkness to the
moment of sunrise.
A few thoughts about the prayer which might help us to feel or personalize it more deeply. In the first and second lines: we recall Mary searching for the twelve year old Jesus who she found in the Jerusalem temple. Luke 2:41-52
In the third and fourth lines: in Luke's Gospel Jesus likens God's searching love to the woman who turned the house upside down to find the lost coin of least value and the shepherd who recklessly left the ninety-nine sheep in search of the one that wandered off. Luke 15: 1-10
History's losses could be the history of our own family: suicide, sudden death, child death, job loss, divorce, addiction, mental illness, sex abuse. Or loss in the history of our own personal lives: loss of faith, loss of friendship, failure in relationship, loss of peace meaning or stability, the loss of a much-desired pregnancy...
How terrible, terrifying, lonely and deep darkness can be. Can you name it for yourself? Rummage is a wild, kind of frenzied word. Heaven rummaging to find us - even or most especially - interiorly.
And can you identify what sunrise might mean for your own life? A dawning? A new start? Dorothy Day wrote: "We are always beginning again." Can you name it?
