Mary had a little lamb: Colette and Clement too

(Photo by John Workman)

When we used to sing "Mary had a little lamb…" back in grade school, who knew that it was fraught with religious significance?

Apparently some people did – such as the author of this Wiki Answers explanation:  Jesus is the Lamb of God, Mary is his mother…  Jesus "followed Mary to school," meaning He preached in the Temple.  It was against the rules – the Pharisees and Sadducees had Him persecuted because Jesus (the Lamb) was preaching against them.  Still, "It made the children laugh and play."  The people were happy because Jesus brought them salvation…

It turns out that Mary wasn't the only one who was privy to a blessed lamb.  In his book Saint Francis, Nature Mystic, Edward Allworthy Armstrong tells us that "Saint Colette, the reformer of the Poor Clares, had a pet lamb which, like Lady Jacopa's, knelt at the Elevation of the Sacrament."  Born

Nicole Boellet, Colette was so named because her previously-barren elderly mother gave birth to her after praying to Saint Nicholas for a child.  Because of this and other miracles associated with her, Colette "is venerated as the patron saint of women seeking to conceive, expectant mothers, and sick children."

Saint Clement of Rome was allegedly banished to the Chersonesus (in the modern-day Ukraine) and sentenced to hard labor in a stone quarry. When he found that his fellow prisoners were tortured by thirst, Clement knelt in prayer for their relief.  Upon looking up, he suddenly saw a lamb on the hillside.  The Apocryphal Acts tell us that Clement went over to where the lamb had been and struck the ground with a pickaxe.  Clear water came gushing out from that very spot, and many of the local Pagans subsequently converted to Christianity.  Unfortunately, this resulted in the martyrdom of Clement – ironically via water.  It

is said that he was "tied to an anchor and thrown from a boat into the Black Sea."

Resources

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_there_religious_meaning_to_Mary_had_a_little_lamb 

http://books.google.com/books?id=ReqGZO4nfTYC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=saint+colette+lamb&source=bl&ots=BT9brnhlhI&sig=XdAfUYyvOojczf4vdslflLclqnE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KQfmUMuFF8u-0QG8uoGgDg&ved=0CFIQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=saint%20colette%20lamb&f=false

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Colette

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Clement_I

Copyright February 10, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved