Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
August 22, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082224.cfm

But when the king came in to meet the guests
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.
He said to him, “My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?”
Matthew 22:11-12

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Today’s readings for the day do not mention Mary, although a second set of readings retells the account of the Annunciation.

I chose instead to pray with the concept of the “garment” which the wedding guest lacked, but that Mary wore in magnificence. The garment is God’s grace given to all of us as it was to Mary, but sometimes abandoned or forgotten as it was with the wedding guest.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray in thanksgiving for the garment of God’s grace and ask to wear it with honor and love.

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Poetry: Suspended – Denise Levertov

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummeted.

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Music: Clothed with Light / Kyrie Eleison – from a Russian Hymn