Mary van Balen

One day last week and friend and I were walking through a small woods near my home.

"Maybe we'll see a Jack-in-the- Pulpit," he said.

I had seen them only once before. They are an early spring flower, and one needs to be out at the right time to spot them. As we walked we saw plenty of Mayapples, spreading their leaves and covering large patches of ground, like a crowd of umbrellas on a rainy day. We saw cut-leaved toothwort and whorls of spotted leaves that, while beautiful themselves, probably will sprout a flower in weeks to come. Then we saw it: the Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

Pushing up out of brown leaf cover, the mostly green plant stood straight, the leaf-hood, or spathe, curled protectively over the spadix, a slender spike that hides tiny flowers at its base. I remembered a small church in England I had attended while living with a friend outside London. The pulpit was attached to one of the columns, and had a baffle around and above the preacher, directing the sound of his voice out to the congregation. The sermon was bad enough to send me out early in search of some quiet place to pray which I found on the banks of the Thames.

The Jack-in-the-Pulpit was preaching much more effectively, crying out, as does Psalm 148, for all creation to praise the Creator. Read More 

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(Originally published in the Catholic Times, April 5, 2012 © 2012 Mary van Balen)



“Are you going to make some this year?” my sister asked as she looked at hot cross buns sitting off to the right in the restaurant’s generous display of pastries and muffins. She was referring to my annual baking of dozens of the Easter treats and giving them away to family, friends, and neighbors. I didn’t bake any last year. We were beginning to clean out our parents’ home, readying it for sale. I didn’t have the heart.

“I hope so,” I replied, not able to make the commitment. Dad died in September. A contract on the house is pending and I am keeping my first Lent in a new flat. I do hope so. Baking and sharing hot cross buns is as good for my spirit as I hope receiving them is for others. Besides, the world is hungry for more than bread, and the small raisin-filled rolls sealed with a white icing cross dripping over their shiny domes carry more than sweetness and calories. They are packed with promise and the baker’s humble efforts to participate in the Easter Mystery. To be bread.

In her book, “Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis,” Lauren Winner tells of a similar experience. After coming home from church on Sunday afternoons, she baked muffins and loaves of bread, and wanting to feed others as she had been fed at Mass, she left them on doorsteps around town.

It is a priest’s heart. It is God’s heart. It is the heart of Jesus living in each one of us that sees hunger and wants to feed it. That sees need and wants to meet it. That sees suffering and wants to stop it.  Read More 

Reading reports of the trial of Monsignor Lynn, the first Roman Catholic church official to be tried in the US in the sexual abuse scandal, I remembered a column I wrote two years ago that dealt with the issue of hierarchy culpability and the need for accountability and repentance. During that Holy Week news of widespread abuse in Europe and Ireland was making headlines. The column was never printed. I knew it would not be, yet I had to write it; I had to put into words the betrayal and frustration I, along with many other Catholics, felt.

Two years later, the news again is of complicity and cover up, but this time, an official of the Church is on trial. I say it is about time. The monsignor's defense claims that he passed the information on to the now deceased Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and others in the Philadelphia archdiocese. No matter. The cardinal is now beyond the reach of civil law, and the defense is the same "passing the buck" that we have heard for over a decade.  Read More 

I slipped into the pew a little late and noticed the lovely palm branches. Some people held them in their hands, some had laid them on the seat behind them. A few secured them with the hat clips on the pew backs, relics of days when hats were ordinary attire for men. They were not the long slender palm buds that my father had woven into crosses or interesting cone shapes when I was a child. These were the dark green leaves of the Emerald Palm and this was first time I had seen them.

As the familiar passion story was proclaimed, my mind wandered. When the story told of Jesus standing before the high priest, I thought of people today, standing in a court room, perhaps with families and supporters attending; perhaps the accused were alone. What dread fills their hearts? Remorse for the guilty ones? Anger for those wrongly accused? What fear for those who love them?

I thought of the emotions of those gathered in support of Travon Martin's parents in Miami. Thousands gathered. I wondered about the family and friends of George Zimmerman in the face of a growing movement and escalating tensions across the country. I thought of all those in our prison system. I thought of the obscurity of most of their cases. And I thought of Jesus.  Read More