O Radix Jesse

O Radix Jesse

“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit”.

I have been thinking of the idea of blossoming stumps. It’s always a surprise when we see little green shoots clinging to something so insignificant and seemingly past it’s prime as an old tree stump. We think: over. Done. And we don’t even give an old stump a second glance.

But God is a Master of second glances.

Barren women conceive prophets, A Virgin inexplicably feels life growing within her, a Carpenter is asked to safeguard the God Child of the Universe, a stable becomes the resting place of a King. All these stumps - these seemingly dead ends - and precisely there grow the shoots.

God has a penchant for stumps. Am I a stump from which He can grow?

I used to meet Tony for noon Mass at a teeny tiny chapel in a Hospital near his work. I had four little guys at the time and they got a kick out of the oddity of seeing Dad in the middle of the day.

These Masses were filled with nurses, Med students, patients in wheel chairs. And us. It was a tight squeeze but the atmosphere in this chapel was wondefully peaceful.

My kids were small then. They would hug me and take my hand and play with the wedding ring there turning it round and round. I could feel the press of their need and affection up against my sides - reaching for the feel of security. The baby in my arms would suddenly arch backwards as babies do to gaze mesmerized at the lights above him.

I was like a “stump” of motherhood and from that stump the shoots were clinging yet growing in every which way. My shy little girl who always held onto my sleeve and ventured out from that stronghold with her bobbing, curly head delighting an older lady next to her simply with her fresh newness of life.

A curious oldest child watching the priest closely and with great invested interest at these gold cups and wine and water and wafers. What is THIS all about, his face seemed to ask? He sought answers.

Second child just all contentment and sweetness snuggled up to my side. They were each taking my love through the hugs and physically pressed affection seeping like sap from my heart. All these little green shoots that would one day bear fruit.

Motherhood is that rooted stump. It looks humble from the outside looking in. It doesn’t have all the answers, it makes crazy mistakes, it worries, it wonders if it can be enough food for all these shoots. It’s a vocation as humbled as a stump. Every mother knows this truth down to her toes.

And still they grow because it is a rooted stump. Rooted in grace - the grace of a Sacrament. That is what feeds your beautiful clinging vines and shoots. They can instinctively feel it and they grow somehow into these marvelous human beings one day fed by your motherhood and fatherhood.

Does the Child Jesus feel like that with us? Does he grow from the stumps of our humbled, human everything - our sins repented, our earnest prayers, our absolute need, our captivated adoration of his beauty? From the hidden, inexplicable sap of grace within us?

Are we in some sense as familiar to Him as a mother He can press up against and feel as though He belongs there in our love? That He is welcomed in our warmth of heart? That He can sprout there and bear fruit?

We can be this mother to Him. This stump like Jesse, rooted in grace, holding to ourselves this beautiful Divine baby growing slowly like shoots within and from us.

For in the end, God has a penchant for stumps.