Mary van Balen

© 2012 Mary van Balen
Originally published in the Catholic Times



We ended the Easter season with the wonderful feast of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit that continues throughout all time. The entrance into Ordinary Time reminds me of Fourth of July’s fireworks finale. The impressionistic splattering of night sky with color, pattern, and smoke has ended and you begin to pick up your blanket or fold up your chairs when suddenly spheres of intense brightness light up smoke trails left in the sky and deep booms vibrate through to the bottoms of your feet. A last hurrah. Feasts pile up like that these weekends: Pentecost, Holy Trinity, and Corpus Christi. Not Easter, exactly, but the glory and mystery of Easter threading through life as it does all year.

Sunday we celebrated our God who is family, relationship, and love. I always think of Rublev’s famous icon written around 1410. It depicts three angels at table, the three angles who visited Abraham at the oak of Mamre, but is often interpreted to represent the Trinity. The table has an empty place at the front, an invitation to come, sit down, and be part of the family. Easter leaking through. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and sending of the Spirit who dwells in each of us. We are not strangers to this divine Family; we belong, related through our brother, Jesus.

Then comes the feast of Corpus Christi, celebrating the Eucharist. We owe this feast in great part to St. Juliana, a nun of Liege, Belgium, who had a great devotion to the Eucharist and was the driving force behind the establishment of the commemoration. She was an interesting figure, having been elected as prioress of a double monastery (Common in the Middle Ages, such a monastery combined a section for monks and one for nuns, both united under one superior, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman.)  Read More 

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
"How small and gentle his coming was. He came as an infant. The night in which he came was noisy and crowded; it is unlikely that in the traffic and travelers to Bethlehem, the tiny wail of the newly born could be heard.

God approaches gently, often secretly, always in love, never through violence and fear. He comes to us, as God has told us, in those we know in our own lives..."
Caryll Houselander, The Passion of the Infant Christ, p. 46


This Christmas, after a long day at work and then baking and cleaning at home,I attended midnight mass at my parish. Walking through the parking lot, I saw candle flames flickering behind stained glass windows, and voices of the choir and congregation singing Christmas carols drifted across the snow covered neighborhood. The area, a mix of business and poor homes, looked transformed by a fresh fall of powdery snow. Read More 

Many things, including this blog, were put on hold for the past week while I was busy packing boxes, making runs to Headstart or the Saint Vincent de Paul center with donations, and sorting through the last possessions left at the house as we prepared for closing.

I look on the successful sale of our home in this difficult economy as a grace. On the market for just a little over two months, our home was purchased by a young couple as taken with the park-like backyard as we had been twenty-eight years ago, and handing my house keys across the table to them was a joy.

Getting to that closing, however, in the three weeks from contract to sale, was not easy and included a hastily put together garage sale, endless phone calls and emails to determine what should be saved and what could be given away, and dividing what remained of jointly owned goods. Read More 

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
The wedding stirred my emotional pot causing a variety of feelings to rise to the surface. Predictably, joy came first and remained dominant; how could it not in the face of the couples’ glorious happiness and love for each other? It spilled out of their eyes and faces, out of their gently touching hands, out of their smiles, and the rest of us, most seasoned veterans of the sacrament, soaked it up.

Hope filled my heart as well as I sat with the guests in rows of white folding chairs set up in the sun. The thought that the bride and groom are a good match pulled sadness along and "What ifs” threatened to ruin the moment. With practice I am becoming more adept dismissing those spoilers, and that is what I did.  Read More 

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
Some days when life seems overwhelming, I am drawn to the bane of healthy eating and common sense: Comfort Food! We all have this unique food group that spans those recommended by nutrition czars who devise pyramids and pie charts to keep us on the straight and narrow. Read More 

Carrying on a tradition from my Dutch heritage, my children each left a shoe and a carrot by the front door for Sinterklaas, or Saint Nicholas. In the morning the carrots had disappeared, eaten by Saint Nicholas's horse, and candies along with a small gift filled the shoes. A simple celebration, but one that continues. My daughters are all in grad school, but they enjoy receiving an envelope from Saint Nick to open on the morning of Dec. 6. Gold coins recall the three bags of gold Saint Nicholas tossed through the window of a cottage that was home to a poor man and his three daughters who had no dowry. Hard candy, and a gift keeps my daughters connected to family and good memories wherever they are.

Tonight I think of my cousins in the Netherlands. Dec. 5, not Christmas, is their gift giving day. The date is not the only difference in our celebrations. In the United States shopping frenzy begins on Black Friday and continues until Christmas day and beyond, when people return gifts to get something they would rather have at a cheaper price. So much time and energy is spent running from store to store, finding the best bargains, wrapping gift after gift, many people are relieved when the Christmas season is over and they can pack up the decorations and get back to an ordinary routine. Christmas has become almost synonymous with excess and consumerism.

Across the ocean, Jeanette, Piet and their family had a more relaxed day. Each person received one special gift, but perhaps the most fun was reading the poems they had written for one another and opening the little gifts, often homemade, that went along with them.

The poems were often humorous, good naturedly poking fun at the recipient or the gift that was offered. One year their oldest son was preparing to take an test for entrance into professional studies. His younger brother made him a "contraption" to use: It had a calculator, a place for notes, and a little mirror to help him read what others had written. Once, a new washing machine was the wish, but all that was affordable was one made of cardboard given along with a poem extolling the virtues of the old machine that creaked and groaned but still managed to present clean clothes.

Christmas day is more like Thanksgiving here: Time to attend church and then for families to gather, share a meal, and enjoy one another's company. As Christmas approaches, I think we would do well to remember that we don't have to wear ourselves out with endless shopping and that the number of gifts have nothing to do with the love that is shared.

******************************************** SAINT NICHOLAS DESIGNED BY RON HENDRIKS  Read More 

Happy Thanksgiving! When Abraham Lincoln first declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, it served as a means of healing the divisions that existed in the country as well as a time set aside to thank God for the many gifts each one knew in his or her life. The holiday is one of my favorites having escaped the gross commercialism and consumerism that engulfs Christmas. Thanksgiving remains a time to share a meal with family and friends and to recognize the good that graces us. It is also a time to pray for the world and those who are suffering in it.

In the midst of busy lives that take us in different geographic directions, my daughters and I enjoyed dinner and conversation last night. We spent today with my father, polishing off a pie for breakfast, watching the parade, and eating a turkey dinner. Later, joined by a good friend, we played cards and "Apples to Apples," laughing until we could barely catch our breath. It felt good.

The future is an unknown; at the moment it includes graduate school for my daughters, maybe for me. Decisions loom ahead. But today, I am savoring rootedness. I am sitting in the living room where I spent twenty-some years celebrating holidays with my family. I am working in the kitchen where I baked pies and basted turkeys with my mother and her mother.

In this house I celebrated God with Us first in the love of family and then with friends, in holydays, and in sacrament. This big, old house is a good place to be as I discern direction for my future. My daughters and I will soak up the security of rootedness, of a place where we are embraced and loved unconditionally, and then we will resume our journeys confident of the love that gives wings as well as roots. Read More