Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death. Appropriately, she died on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Our Blessed Mother, Mary. My Mum’s name is Patricia. She was popularly known as Pat. A woman of great humour and a magnificent singing voice, she performed in a number of musicals in our town of Napier, most memorably in The Music Man. She also had a fierce devotion of Our Lady. Because she was never encouraged to read the Bible and grew up with the Latin mass, she had very limited knowledge of the Bible. She grew up on Bible stories. So, her great source of spiritual comfort was the rosary. She also had a big picture of Our Lady of the Assumption in the hallway of our house. To add to this sense of devotion to Our Lady, our parish of St Patrick’s, Napier, was a Marist parish. Furthermore, the whole area was Marist. Where I went to High School, St John’s, in Hastings was run by the Marist Fathers. The Marist seminary was located in Greenmeadows, just outside Napier. The area was so strongly Marist that I thought the whole church was Marist until a panel of priests came to St John’s for vocations promotion. We were surprised when one them said he belonged to oldest order of all, founded long before the Marists, the order of St Peter. That was the first time I encountered a diocesan priest! (I should add, however, that I will always be grateful for the marvellous education and human inspiration I received from the Marist brothers and fathers during my schooling years.) Anyway, it was only later in life that my Mum, Pat Rouse, was given the chance to peak through the Bible and she would have been enthralled by this wonderful gospel text for today (Luke 1:26-38) about this very young woman who lived in this obscure village called Nazareth who, while she was probably in the little kitchen of her house, had this startling vision of an angel who urged her not to be afraid and informed her that God saw her as so special that God wanted her to bear a son, Jesus, who would be the Son of the Most High and one who would assume the throne of his ancestor David. No wonder she was disturbed! But thank God she agreed. And despite not being encouraged or even allowed to read the Bible, my Mum found great comfort and support from our Blessed Mother, Mary, through the timeless devotion we call the rosary.