Mtr Mary Trainor

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.*

Dear friend,

Isaiah. John the Baptist. Jesus. An orderly succession of messengers proclaiming God’s word of love, hope, and salvation to all the peoples of the world.

The lineup is spelled out in the first verses of Mark’s Gospel (1:1-15), an appropriate selection for this day on which the Church remembers St. Mark the Evangelist.

Yet more than being a hat-tip to Saint Mark, this passage reveals the path of salvation through time.

We are reading this in Eastertide, specifically the Great Fifty Days between Resurrection Sunday and the Day of Pentecost.

In Easter season, Jesus is still among us. But we know that he will leave again, and soon. When he does, proclaiming God’s word of love, hope, and salvation is placed in our hands. God continues the transition of the prophetic voice. Now it comes to us. To the Church. To me. To you.

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

My Grandmother Trainor was a woman of many accomplishments. She reared five children virtually singlehanded, carting them back and forth cross-country by train. She was among the first women to vote. She survived a flu pandemic,  the Great Depression, a couple of World Wars. And she gave all she had to her children. She cooked. She sewed. She counseled. She helped with homework. 

The Trainors were not wealthy. Nor were there many things of value to pass along when my grandmother died in 1962. Her five children divided evenly the things of material worth. A few sentimental things were left, and two of them came to me.

When I moved to Tucson last year, I offloaded many, many possessions. After all, what filled a 4-bedroom, 2-bath house with a garage and huge yard, was not going to fit into a 1-bedroom apartment. 

But guess what were the first two things through the door: the 16 by 20 portrait of my grandmother as a child; and her unfinished quilt in the now-heirloom Sunbonnet Sue motif.

Our roots, our heritage, are treasures passed along from generation to generation. Some in the next generations cannot see the value, and discard, perhaps for a later time—or not.

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

I wonder if this trend applies also to our inherited faith. Some abandon, some discard. And others embrace it for the living treasure that it is, taking it with them, planting it in any fertile soil that will receive it.

Mtr. Mary

*Now the green blade riseth,” Number 204, Hymnal 1982.