Lectio Divina — “Mother”
Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Day 8 of the Season of Creation
Lectio — Mother
> “When his mother Mary…”
— Matthew 1:18
Today the Church celebrates not simply the birth of another person, but the birth of the woman through whom God chose to enter creation as one of us. Matthew’s genealogy reminds me that God’s providence does not always travel along the straight fences I would build for it. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba appear amid circumstances that seem irregular and unexpected, until everything culminates in the astonishing Mother: Mary, the virgin from whom Jesus is born.
God does not discard creation in order to redeem it. He enters it. He takes flesh from a mother.
On this Feast of Mary’s Nativity, I ask myself whether I can recognize that same divine creativity when the future arrives at The Glenn in ways I did not plan.
Meditatio — Mother
Last week I said goodbye to Morada and Rosa as they went to a large sheep ranch near Stanton. That left Perezvon and Rojo. For now, two livestock guardian dogs are sufficient. But stewardship asks me to think beyond now.
Perezvon is five years old. His working years will not last forever. Rojo, his son, has become the finest LGD I have had, and I would like his line to continue. And so another unexpected chapter is opening: Bianca, a registered Maremma Sheepdog, five and a half months old, whose owner’s ranch plans were delayed, is coming to The Glenn this weekend.
Perhaps someday Bianca will become a mother, and a third generation of livestock guardian dogs will begin here.
That makes this Feast strangely concrete for me.
Mary herself once entered the world as a little girl. Nobody looking at that infant could have seen with human eyes what God was preparing. Yet this child would become the Mother of Jesus and, as the Church calls her, Queen of all creation.
That challenges my instinct to value creatures primarily according to what they can eventually do for me. Bianca is not valuable because she may someday produce another Rojo. Perezvon does not lose his value when age takes away his ability to work. Creation is not merely breeding stock, pasture, water, production and usefulness. It is gift.
Mary teaches me to look differently.
She “treasured all these things in her heart.” Perhaps that is the contemplative posture I need during this Season of Creation: not immediately calculating, controlling or exploiting, but first treasuring.
Today I ask the Mother of Jesus to lend me her eyes so that I might see The Glenn not merely as something entrusted to my management, but as something entrusted to my love.
Oratio — Mother
Holy Mary, Mother of God and Queen of all creation,
on the feast of your birth, teach me to receive rather than possess.
You watched your Son grow without knowing beforehand every road he would travel. Teach me that kind of trust.
As Bianca comes to The Glenn, help me welcome her first as a creature of God and only then as a guardian, companion, or perhaps someday a mother.
Help me care for Perezvon as he grows older,
guide Rojo in the work before him,
and teach me to recognize that worth does not disappear when usefulness does.
Mother Mary, give me your eyes of wisdom.
Teach me to treasure creation in my heart,
to discern rather than dominate,
and to recognize within the ordinary creatures around me
the extraordinary creativity of God.
Mary, Mother and Queen of all creation, pray for me. Amen.
Contemplatio — Mother
There is something wonderfully appropriate about contemplating artificial intelligence on a feast celebrating a mother.
AI can produce words about motherhood. It can analyze breeding records, help me think through the future of an LGD program, organize information about Maremmas, and perhaps suggest a hundred things I ought to consider before Bianca ever becomes a mother.
But it cannot be a mother.
And that distinction reaches to the heart of Magnifica humanitas.
Technology offers me astonishing speed and apparent objectivity. It can give me an answer almost before I have finished forming the question. The danger is that gradually I may prefer the immediate answer to the slow work of wisdom. I may begin mistaking information for understanding, simulation for relationship, and efficiency for love.
Mary offers another model.
She does not instantly explain everything that happens to her. She ponders. She treasures. She remains in relationship. Her wisdom grows within an embodied human life of uncertainty, joy, suffering, fidelity and love.
Perhaps that is why this Feast belongs so naturally within the Season of Creation. Creation itself refuses to become merely data. Perezvon growing old is not a statistic. Rojo’s abilities cannot be reduced to a score. Bianca’s future cannot be generated by an algorithm. And the possibility that she might someday become a mother involves living creatures, relationships and responsibilities that demand something more from me than information.
AI may assist my discernment, but I must not surrender my discernment to AI.
And perhaps Mary provides the simplest test: Does the technology help me treasure reality more deeply, or does it tempt me to substitute something artificial for reality?
On the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I look toward a puppy who will soon arrive at The Glenn and whose future I cannot know. I need not know it.
Mary reminds me that some of God’s greatest works begin not with certainty, control or prediction, but with the humble reception of a life—and the willingness to watch with wonder as God’s purpose unfolds.
Today I will let technology remain a tool, creation remain a gift, and Mary teach me how to be its attentive steward: not by possessing tomorrow, but by treasuring today.
Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
