The Honey Harvest Brings Thoughts of God's Goodness: Taste and See

Life is more than a continuous argument (in the Socratic sense) about the faith, with all the scandals and errors infecting the poor Bride of Christ. Not that the faith should't imbue everything we do, but some things testify to the simple art of living in joy. You get up in the morning, say your morning prayers, offer the entire day to God, and think of Him frequently during the day blessing Him for everything. It's a good practice to spiritualize all the events of the day, especially the simple things. 

When my children were growing up, I prayed for my husband and each child as I folded their laundry. That kept me thinking about them and presenting them to God as I completed a necessary and sometimes tiresome chore. The same with cooking meals. I think about who will eat this food that God has so generously provided. "Bless us, O Lord and these Thy gifts."

How Does the Evil One Mess with You?

Two hives down with contents now in the belly of the beast!

If you're a beekeeper like I am, there is one thing that really messes with your bees. (Well, there are other things, but this one is a weapon of mass destruction.) I'm talking about bears! A bear got into our bee yard during the night between Spy Wednesday and Holy Thursday. We had four hives in the bee yard. He wiped out one completely and munched through about a dozen frames of nectar/pollen. He upset another hive turning it upside down which may have protected the bees since he couldn't pull out the frames without righting the box. He dragged half a dozen frames into the woods where he apparently munched in private and left several other demolished frames in the bee yard.

Monday Miseries...but Hope in Our Queen

It must be Monday...and a Monday after a bad night of not much sleep. The day outside my window is beautiful, but it can't hide the fact that our world is falling apart. And why?

Well...I'll give my opinion from the perspective of a beekeeper. We have three hives. Two of them are "queen right." That means they each have a laying queen who is doing her job keeping the hive populated with busy little bees to collect nectar and pollen for the hive. All is well in those two "queen right" hives. In one sense, those hives are "pro-life" with the queen laying up to 1200 eggs a day. And it's thrilling to inspect the frames and see the tiny larva curled up at different stages of development before being "capped."

But we have a third hive that has no queen. For a month we've tried to remedy the situation. The hive swarmed (The queen left with about half the bees.) but there were "swarm cells" that should have provided a replacement queen. She never appeared. Then we put in two queen cells that hatched, but nothing came of that either. Now, a month later, that hive is still queenless and there is no brood -- no babies to replace the aging workers. Unless we can remedy the situation, that hive is doomed. Oh, they continue to collect nectar, but with no new workers developing they are in a demographic collapse. The death of their hive society is inevitable without a queen.

Yup...it takes a queen. Which reminds me of another culture of death that was saved by a queen. When Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared in Mexico in 1531 the people were still enslaved in the pagan mentality of the Aztecs. The Church had made little headway against the prevailing culture of death. But after Mary appeared robed in the garments of an Aztec princess in an image that indicated her supremacy over the sun, her mantle decorated in the southern constellations and the cross at her neck, eight million conversions took place in the next ten years.

Isn't that what we need here in the United States? Our pagan culture of death desperately needs Mary. Please pray the rosary and beg for her intercession. Let us not be like a queenless hive of bees working away as if all as well while we collapse and face inevitable death. Let's look to Mary for hope and call upon her, our never-failing mother. Remember..."Never was it known that anyone who fled to [her] protection, implored [her] help, or sought [her] intercession was left unaided."

Mary, Queen of the Americas, pray for us.