If I were to design a statue of Mary, she would have Baby Jesus perched on her hip, with her veil and hair in slight disarray.  Her breasts would be swollen from the milk with which she nourished Our Lord.  On her face, would be a happy but slightly exasperated smile, that we have all seen in the mirror at one time or another. No one mentions diapers.  As far as I know, there are biblical records of Christ dining in people's homes.  Biological functions not excluded, Mary, not blessed with Pampers, must have laundered clothes and diapers by hand without the benefit of General electric, bleach or fabric softener. The flight into Egypt was no picnic.  Did you ever travel, even for short trips, with a toddler?  After the first fifteen minutes on the road, you can be sure they are either hungry, cranky or wet.  When they arrived and got settled, she was in a land of strangers and unbelievers.  She couldn't very well say to the neighborhood bully. "Look, stop pushing Jesus around.  He's the Messiah."
				Mary raised a teen-ager and lost him at the brink of puberty.  He was missing.  She and Joseph had inadvertently misplaced the "Hope of all Mankind."  Was she tormented with thoughts like, "Dear God, what if some harlots tried to seduce my Son, or what if He was lying somewhere mugged for His sandals?" Jesus was in the temple, and he politely told her that He must be about His Father's business.  We have all been through the "know-it-all phase."  She must have given him that "You are only twelve years old," speech and "How could you hurt Joseph and me," because there are no further reports of Jesus running off and doing "His own thing," at least not in His teens.
	Years passed and she buried her husband ... the man who shared her home, meals, worries and joys.  Again, Joseph's age is in question.  At that time carpenters could not buy their supplies at the local lumber yard.  He must have chopped wood with a fairly steady hand to fashion what he sold or bartered to support his family.  Did she gently carress a bench or table that he made, and with tears in her eyes, did she think of him, miss him? Her husband was dead and rumors reported that her son was gallivanting around the countryside with some fishermen, speaking his mind and making enemies of some powerful men.  Talk about worries, she couldn't call him long distance and complain or warn Him. No words could possibly describe her grief at the foot of the cross.  Only someone else who has experienced the devastation in the loss of a child could try to sum up that sort of agony.  I know a few such parents, but it is not the sort of feeling you would like to ask someone to relate.  The mere thought of it terrifies me. Did you ever count the religious apparitions, approved or pending approval by the church, that revolve around her?  We have buried her rosaries in our dresser drawers.  It isn't proper to say a rosary during a mass.  The pious old ladies who silently mouthed Hail Marys in the back of a darkened church are a distant childhood memory and surely on the endangered species list. She must look down on us patiently, lovingly and sympathetically.  She was the original chalice and ciborium who looked lovingly into her Son's eyes and could say, before any priest, the words of the consecration, " This is my body, This is my blood."
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