Sister Eloise Rosenblatt

It’s probably not historically exact: The scenic image of Mary setting out alone from Nazareth astride a donkey, concerned to visit her older cousin, six-months pregnant Elizabeth, in the hilly village of Ain Kerem, outside Jerusalem. The journey, straight as the crow flies, is 65 miles or 104 kilometers. In Mary’s day, the road would have detoured along the western edge of Israel, closer to the Mediterranean, to avoid passing directly through unfriendly Samaria. No single woman – old or young – would have traveled four or five days alone, exposed to danger like the man who fell victim to thieves, memorialized in Luke’s parable of the good samaritan.

In Numbers, Moses feels overwhelmed by his responsibilities for a restive people in the desert. He begs God for help. God’s response could have been thunder and lightning, to awe the Israelites into submission, so they would stop complaining or interfering, and passively surrender to Moses’ decision-making.

Will we ever be finished with the problems of Adam and Eve in the garden? Eve seems to get the blame, and through her, Eve-women are forever, supposedly, the cause of having brought evil into the world.

That Ash Wednesday, I was cunning. After Mass, before the bell rang for start of school, scores of students, boys, girls, grade levels all mixed, rag-tagged into four lines in back of church, then rambled up the center and side aisles to get their ashes.