This picture was sent in by someone retired out of the NC-DOJ. That’s somehow appropriate! It’s not quite a flower, but not all bits and pieces you might put in a bucket of flowers to give to the Queen Mother of the Heavens and of the Earth are flowers, right? I mean, when I was a kid, I would add all sorts of milkweed pods, cattails, budding branches… but never a hangman’s noose! I’m older now…
The Immaculate Conception, who suffered so terribly in solidarity of heart with her Divine Son, knew, of course, that at that very time Judas was hanging by just such a noose far below Calvary, perhaps within sight in those days, in the Potter’s Field, the Field of Blood, right at the lower end of street of today’s Pontifical Biblical Institute, Paul Emile Botta Street. [… ! …]
Would she appreciate seeing such a noose in an arrangement of flowers? Everything works to the good of those who love God, right? Here’s the deal:
Knowing people are in hell makes those in heaven to praise the majestic justice of God.
That is always one of the most difficult things to understand, isn’t it? A soul who thinks he is beyond forgiveness, how difficult to receive the Grace to ask for it anyway, and repent. I pray that these of us receive those graces, today, before it is too late to ask.