Feast of Saint Margaret Clitherow

Good morning. This early spring morning we hear from two stories regarding parents. The one, a rather familiar one, the story of the father and the Prodigal Son from the Gospel of Luke, and the other a story of a mother and the protection of her children even to death. The story of our Saint for today, Saint Margaret Clitherow, tells how she protected her children from persecution by the government for practicing their faith. In the Gospel of Luke we find a father who faces a problem many of us might encounter, that of being a parent to a child who is grown. The father of Luke’s story is faced with deciding how to respond to his son’s request for his portion of his inheritance. How this must have hurt. He more than likely wonders if his son will be prudent in his use of the money. His son is insistent, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me’, and rather than risk losing his son’s affection he relents and we know the rest of the story. For those of us with grown children this is likely a story we can, at least in part, relate to. It is not likely that we encounter our adult children requesting their portion of the estate, but we can probably all relate to situations where an adult child makes decisions that run counter to our own thoughts on a particular matter. For most of us these matters tend to amount to very little when all is said and done, or perhaps the story depicted in the Gospel of Luke is your life story to a ‘T’. Either way, like our Saint for today, Margaret Clitherow, we find ourselves forever protective of our children, and like the father in Luke 15, we find ourselves wanting to forgive no matter the circumstances. Although there are never any guarantees how our children will turn out, it is typically the case that "A tree from good stock doesn't produce scrub fruit nor do trees from poor stock produce choice fruit”, and so there should hopefully not be any major situations requiring our forgiveness. Either way, we should always remember that we all have been cause for disappointment of some degree for our own parents, and we need always remember that our Heavenly Father forgives us continuously. For now let us always remember to recognize the good decisions our children old and young make each and every day. Make a great day!

Today we recall the good life, gifts, and works of Saint Margaret Clitherow.