Summer is a natural time for a bit of reflection on the odds and ends of life and faith. Here are a few of mine.

 

Immigration: Whenever news reports on immigrants leave me feeling claustrophobic, I remind myself that the highest estimated number of illegal immigrants living in or trying to come to the U.S. is much lower than the smallest estimates of U.S. abortions to date. 

 

Our country is like a Swiss cheese, full of holes where those who were aborted would otherwise be. Those losses have impacted our families, businesses and economies in ways we can’t even imagine. 

 

But God continues to love us. We might speculate that perhaps He is taking pity on our country by sending us people who mostly want to work, are family-oriented, and believe in Jesus or at least have cultural norms reflecting His teachings. Many of them possess a deep love for Christ and His Blessed Mother.

 

Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum. Non-natives will come over time to fill the population gaps we have created. If we continue to reject the mostly-Christian people who are coming to us now, God and nature may well provide us with more and more immigrants who are not blessed to be followers of Jesus.

 

Mary: Church tradition says our Blessed Mother has been given a crown of 12 stars. Paintings of Mary crowned with little twinkly lights do not do justice to that tradition.

 

As we grow in love and sacrifice, our hearts are expanded — sometimes far beyond our original ability to love. It is fun to ponder how greatly expanded Mary must be. Stars, after all, are suns, and 12 of them as big as our sun make for a crown that is cosmic indeed.

 

That should make us happy — for her and for us.

 

God: We may wonder sometimes how God could possibly care about puny, little us. How could God even notice the one-in-billions who is me, much less care?

 

But God is infinite. 

 

We really can’t imagine, and our eyes could never take in, someone who doesn’t have an end, who goes infinitely beyond the borders of our earth, of our galaxy, of the universe.

 

God, always, is more, and that means physical size doesn’t matter to Him. The dimensions of a leaf on a tree and the expanse of the Milky Way galaxy are kind of the same to one who is infinite. The physically-smallest things can be just as important to Him as the cosmically-great things.

 

The Bible says that for God a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as a day. We might apply that idea to all things, great and small. What is small in our eyes can be great; and vice versa.

According to our saints, what attracts God is love. When we have greater love, we might say our inner dimensions are becoming greater than our outer dimensions. That’s the kind of “bigger” that matters to our infinite God.

 

Jesus: Speaking of infinity, think of how much love Jesus had to have for us to be willing to shrink Himself down to our size — and stay there for a human lifetime.

 

We tend to fret when our “wings are clipped,” as the saying goes. It is hard for us to accept boundaries and rules and laws and our physical limitations. Those are things we would not likely choose to endure.

Whenever we find ourselves held down, pushed back, burdened beyond what is just, or dismayed by the diminishing results of age, let’s ponder Jesus’ great sacrifice. 

 

During His time here before His ascension, He was the infinite God dwelling in His totality within the boundaries of an infant. He was the Almighty who became dependent on Joseph and Mary for survival. He was the All-Knowing One thinking within the confines of a human brain. 

 

Whenever we feel downtrodden by life’s limitations, let’s realize we are sharing in a part of Jesus’ cross that we normally don’t think about.

 

Jesus’ sacrifice may have culminated with His Passion, but it began with His conception. That’s how much God loves us.