Tobit 10:1-7. Tobit and his wife Anna are getting anxious about the fact that their son Tobias is not yet returned from his journey. They do not know that he has found and married a wife while on his errand. Anna becomes especially distressed and is convinced that Tobias has perished. She will not listen to Tobit who tells her to stop worrying. She goes out to the road everyday to watch for her son. She eats nothing in the daytime, and mourns all night "until the fourteen days of [Tobias'] wedding feast had expired."

I have blogged this passage before, too, and it was incredibly helpful to me! (I wonder if my frequent repetitions are God's way of telling me that it is time to end this blog and move on to something else? I will think on that.) I so much relate to Anna here with her motherly worry and assuming the worst. One thing I didn't reflect on before is that Anna didn't eat for fourteen days - the fourteen days of that her son's wedding feast was going on (unbeknownst to her!) and it worked! Her son decided to come home after those two weeks were up!

Sometimes I get discouraged in my fasting because I don't see anything changing, but this is a lesson for me not to do that! I don't know if Anna purposely was fasting or if it was just her anxiety making her not eat, but either way, she was foregoing food for the sake of her son, and she was a faithful woman, so she received the desired result - her son's safe return! Even if I don't see what is happening "behind the scenes" in the lives of those I am praying for as I fast, and even if I don't see results right away, or at all, it's still is efficacious and I still must have hope and stop worrying.

This is especially true since I have consecrated myself to Mary. Through that consecration, I gave everything to her. Rather than "aiming" my fasting at a particular person, then, I offer to her whatever merits are gained from it and she dispenses them in the most perfect way. I don't have to see the results, I know that she, as our loving mother, will give them to whoever needs and can benefit from them the most! I still keep praying for those I love, though, and trust that someday, when the time is right, she will dispense the appropriate graces from the storehouse she holds for her Son in my life and the lives of those I love. She is the most wonderful mother!

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. All of us mothers should remember how she suffered in the most faithful and humble way, always trusting that God would bring good out of it. And He always does!