July 26, 2005
Parents
When they started out, Joachim (aka Joseph) and Anne probably never much had in mind becoming the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
That aside, neither, I suspect, could they imagine having any part in an event that came to be known as the Immaculate Conception. (One of those notions, among others, about which seminarians, “in my day,” reveled in a superfluity of naughtiness.) Nevertheless, the church in its characteristic and considerably delayed wisdom decided they surely must have, and in 1854 proclaimed the dogma recognizing that Mary was conceived “free from all stain of original sin.”
The lesser feast today for Mary’s folks is one of those “fifteen minutes of fame” Andy Warhol touted. It is also one the few days I know about that’s set aside for parents, more or less the symbolic lot of the most of us standing in the shadow of above-average kids, which, if I’m not mistaken, includes us all.
`