I know the answers. I know about St. Monica. I know all the examples. Still I wonder, will anything I have asked ever be granted, or am I perhaps asking wrongly? But I do not ask for a Porsche, or a movie-star bride, or for my friend to be made King of Europe. So does what I ask ever mean anything?
December 26th, the Feast of St. Stephen, who, dying, prayed for his murderers - prayed for Saul. And God heard his prayer. From the Office of Readings for Dec. 26th:
Love led [Stephen] to pray for those who stoned him, to save them from punishment. Strengthened by the power of his love, he overcame the raging cruelty of Saul and won his persecutor on earth as his companion in heaven. In his holy and tireless love he longed to gain by prayer those whom he could not convert by admonition.
I'm no Stephen, but it's comforting to know that even the most seemingly hopeless of prayers can have an effect. I just need to learn patience, even to the end of time.
Tomorrow, the Holy Innocents. Two thousand years have passed, and time has folded upon itself, and in the quest to destroy Christ, the State has blood on its hands once more. We idolize the unknown soldier, whose lifeblood is spilled for the preservation of the State. Sad that his life is claimed by others, that it is not his own to give, but the State's to take, that the State may live. Sadder still that that unknown soldier's blood was spillt for those whose devouring maw we worship, we who have forgotten the unknown children, though we remember the soldiers who defend the State that takes their lives. Blood, oh such blood, that the blood of innocents and the blood of the simple should flow rivers, all in the name of the holy State, whose power we must not question. Blood, oh such blood.
Tomorrow, the Holy Innocents. Yesterday, St. Stephen. Martyrs and blood, the cradle and the cross.
And today, the Holy Family, a ray of hope, if we accept the sacrifice. Mary, mother of God and mother of the Church, pray for us. St. Joseph, terror of demons, intercede for us.
St. Stephen and St. Paul...
...pray for us.
+JMJ+
ReplyDeleteI've been praying for a certain intention for nearly two years and don't seem to be getting anywhere with it. In 2008, I made it a special request to Padre Pio on his feast day and then called on all the saints I could name on All Saints Day. When the same dates rolled around again in 2009, I was at a terrible low. Am I doomed, I asked myself, to be the Sisyphus of the liturgical year?
I remember it again now that Ash Wednesday is on the horizon. Lent 2009 was when I started reserving the last decade of every rosary I say for that intention. All those rosaries--nearly one a night--and still no "results."
Many years ago, a Catholic woman started a 'blog which dealt, among many things, with her infertility. I will never forget the post in which she said that she'd willingly wait any length of time to have a baby, as long as she could be sure that she'd have that baby. That is true for me now, though what I pray for is something different: waiting is easy as long as we have a guarantee that we'll have what we want in the end.
Of course, as we both know, it doesn't work that way, does it?
Yet there are happy endings. Today, the aforementioned 'blogger has two lovely children. Her infertility 'blog has become a mommy 'blog.
I like scraps of hope like these.