Yardwork for Mother

“Do we have any pickaxes?”
“How about a machete?”

Smiling, I thought to myself, I would be doing the same thing at home with my dad, for my mom on her birthday. We didn’t find a pickaxe or machete on our packing list for seminary, but these were the tools we needed to do some yardwork for our spiritual Mother.

We started the feast of our mother Mary’s birthday, Saturday September 8th, by praying the Rosary, Lauds & Mass. After prayer, Fr. Ivany invited volunteers to dig a 100-foot trench out back to stop water runoff from eroding the path around our stations of the cross, and to have a little fun while doing it. A dozen of us donned boots and jeans and got dirty.

As we laughed and worked, I felt my heart growing wider to accept new seminary experiences alongside good childhood memories. In my memory I saw myself at my parents’ home laying mulch in spring, pulling weeds in summer, cleaning gutters in fall, and shoveling snow in winter. Now, doing yardwork with my spiritual father and brothers on the birthday of my spiritual Mother, I was grateful for the ability to see these men also as my family, and Saint John Paul II Seminary as my home as well.

I didn’t always like doing yardwork, but I grew into it. It once seemed annoying and trivial, but I now appreciate more of its power. A quote attributed to St. Teresa of Calcutta says, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family,” and that’s the power I saw in my brother seminarians and our faculty. Simple hours of yardwork were a chance to serve my brothers and to trust them, and this love changed our experience of seminary for the better. Since that experience, I stop to think of Mary’s maternal gaze watching over us and interceding for us throughout the day. For me, the power of loving my family did change the world. It changed strangers into a family and a seminary into a home.