“The Burpee’s is Here!”

That was the big Spring announcement when, as kids, we found the Burpee Seed Catalog in our rural mailbox at the end of winter.  Eager for anything colorful, we poured over those pages - fodder for dreams of garden flowers and foods, for new life and the promise of a new season.  Now, hovering in mid-Lent, my dry soul/garden needs a version of the Burpee Catalog and I realize I have one, we all do  – it’s called the Gospel.  But unlike a package from the seed catalog, we don’t have to wait for it to arrive, we don’t have to be in the best possible condition to plant or harvest.  Because our God doesn’t work that way;   God’s mercy and grace abound even when we feel like we’re in a perpetual February or snowy March.  Gardens of every kind appear everywhere in scripture and the Holy is found there in all times and all seasons.  Take the time to ponder, sit with, and image these words of Catherine of Siena for your own wintry soul:   “We are always enclosed, O Triune God, within the garden of your heart.”

Priscilla Wood, OP

Dubuque, IA