My 19-year old son is a person with a mental handicap. He works at the local library with a job coach in the afternoons, learning to shelve books. He often checks out movies and books that he thinks I will enjoy. He is generous beyond imagining. Last week, it was a novel about the Hebrew maids, the virgins including the Blessed Virgin Mary, who where chosen to weave the veil in the Temple in Jerusalem; he read the word virgins and saw on the dustjacket cover a young woman who looking very Marian. He did this last week around the time of the Feast of the Presentation when the child Jesus was presented in the very Temple He would be condemned to death in. My son notices all the Marian art around here. When I am upset, he says, "You should ask Mary to help you shouldn't you?"
Now comes the comedy part. Today, he brings home, "Bread on Arrival." It is a culinary murder mystery. He reads only on a second grade level but look at that cover art. Look at that prostrate gingerbreadman! Check out the kitchen equipment! Maybe I'll be like the bread making heroine and combine my bread making with a little detective work! (We make a lot of bread at our house, and I've been writing about not murdering the yeast. That kid really listens!) To read the dustjacket description is to roll in flour strewn floor. He just simply picked out the perfect book for his food writing, wise-cracking, mystery loving mama. He nailed it! (So to speak!)
Now serious again. This is the kind of human being that prenatal tests would extinguish, just like the Downs Syndrome babies.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Jesus, graciously hear us.