The Love Story God Intended

Books were a luxury in 13th-century Italy. Hence, when someone went to the trouble of writing a book by hand, they treasured it beyond measure. Father Anthony had a book of Psalms he had copied by hand, with personal notes he referred to while teaching. Once, a young novice left the community and took the treasured book with him. The priest was crestfallen, realizing his years of work were lost. No one knew where the novice had gone, so there wasn't even a remote possibility of recovering the book. But Father Anthony did not lose heart; trusting in God's providence, he prayed for the novice to have a change of heart and return the book. Anthony's prayer was soon answered, for the novice returned with a contrite heart. Asking for forgiveness, he gave the book back to the saintly priest who forgave him and accepted him back to the seminary. After Father Anthony's death, together with the many stories of his holiness, this story became quite popular. Thus, Saint Anthony of Padua came to be constantly invoked for finding lost things. Over the years, his reputation became so widespread that the Church officially declared him the patron Saint of lost items. Saint Anthony had deep faith in God, enough to surrender his worries and trust His will. The next time we invoke the Saint to find our lost things, let us pray that he asks the Lord to grant us the kind of faith that led and strengthened him in Christ.

Disconnected from God, wallowing in despair…yet in the dark void of my life, ‘someone’ unexpectedly reached out to me.  Three miscarriages in a row...Each one of those losses, emotionally more and more difficult, medically more complicated, and the recovery process more and more drawn out. After the third, I found myself in this incredibly dark season of deep depression.  I was so angry at the Lord for allowing these trials to happen in my life. Why would He let this happen to a good Catholic who has been trying to do all the right things?  I gave the Lord the silent treatment for about 18 months. We continued to be dutiful Catholics—going through the motions, continuing to go to Mass, saying our prayers before meals…just checking the boxes. But in my heart, I wasn't praying at all, except for this one honest prayer I repeated at heart: “I belong to You. I don't like what You're doing, and I don't understand any of this, but the only thing worse than what I am feeling right now would be to be completely without the hope of Heaven, without the hope of ever seeing the little ones that I lost…” So, I made this bargain with God: “If I keep doing the right things, You should hold up Your end of the bargain; at the end of my life, You'll let me into Heaven, to see the little ones that I lost.” But I was spiraling down. Disconnected from God, I was no longer a good mother or a good friend. My small business had to be shut down because I couldn’t keep up with life’s demands anymore. Through this void, someone reached out to me, an unexpected ‘someone!’ Yelling at God The Rosary used to be a daily prayer through high school and early college, but once I got married and the kids started coming, I put the rosary up on a shelf and thought: “That's a prayer for people who have a lot of time and I certainly have none; so maybe later, when I get a little older, I'll take it back down off the shelf.” But in the deep darkness, I began feeling a call back to praying the Rosary. It felt totally ridiculous because I was still very very angry at the Lord, and I had no desire to pray. With four little kids, I didn't have the time. So, I kept pushing it off and out of my mind, but the Lord began to get more and more persistent.  I’d unexpectedly find cues in the most unlikely places—a rosary I'd never seen before turned up in my locked car, my toddler handed me my confirmation rosary that I hadn't seen in years, random people who weren't even Catholic would just give me rosaries (like this time when someone gave me as rosary and said: “I was cleaning out my grandma's desk and I thought you would want this”). I got to the point where I could no longer deny what the Lord was asking of me. For the first time in 18 months, I said a prayer. A more honest expression would be, I yelled at God; it was this very snarky prayer. I marched into the church, straight up to the altar, and flopped down all my excuses—I couldn't find the time to pray the Rosary, most times I couldn’t even find any of my rosaries, and if I do manage to find time AND find the rosaries, my kids would keep interrupting me, I had trouble picking up where I left off…not to mention, my kids would have probably already broken all the rosaries that I have! I didn't even wait for a response from the Lord, I just spun on my heel and marched out of the church, feeling: “See, I told you, it's ridiculous to pray the Rosary.”  Nothing Better Than This Within a week of that, I was inspired to design a rosary bracelet which literally solved every single one of those excuses that I had given. It's always right on hand so I never forget to pray, it's super-sturdy so my kids can't break it, but the really life-changing, revolutionary part was the movable crucifix charm that works like a little bookmark which enabled me to pick up from where I left off. I’d pray in the quiet moments that were hidden through my day. In between taking care of the kids, doing chores, and running errands, I could always find a minute here or 10 minutes there to get a couple Hail Marys or sometimes even a whole decade in.  Little by little, throughout the day, I began to get an entire Rosary in. I was still very angry and broken and did not have a lot of hope that the Rosary would fix it all, but I was just so tired that I knew this couldn't hurt. I was desperate—there was nothing better to do, so I felt I might as well try this.  Healing didn’t just happen. It wasn't a tele-evangelist healing moment where the skies just parted and glory came down. It was this very slow journey, the same way we pray the Rosary, bead by bead, step by step, prayer by prayer. Little by little, Our Lady began to really be a mother to me. What I began to see in that darkness was not the Mary that I grew up seeing—the Nazareth Mary or Christmas-card, 20-something-Mary with flawless skin. Instead, I found Mary at Calvary, a tear-streaked, blood-stained, road-weary mother who knew what it was like to suffer and lose someone that she dearly loved. This woman, I could relate to! This mother, I so badly needed in this season of my life.  Afterall, she wasn’t the one I was angry at. But she, as my mother, ever so gentle, came into this raw and broken place I was in and walked me slowly out into the arms of my Heavenly Father. But that was just one part; there was another part of my life that was still in chaos.  A Conversation Ensues The third miscarriage had been physically and emotionally too difficult; since it was the second trimester, we had to go to the hospital, go through labor, and deliver our son.  From there, my husband and I took different paths of grief. I shut down and withdrew, and he poured himself into work, drinking, and overindulging in a lot of ways. Our relationship became fractured.  When I began praying the Rosary and started on my road of healing, I tried to encourage him as well, but he pushed it off. I slowly opened the shop back up, put the rosary bracelet that the Lord inspired into the shop and that began to really take off. I kept asking him to join me; I gave him a rosary bracelet that he began to wear, but he wasn’t praying with it. That was when I began very intentionally to pray my Rosary every day, for him.  I would intentionally use those quiet moments to pray and let my family see that I was praying amid and between my chores. My husband began to see not only this but also the change in me. Slowly, he gave in and our whole family began to experience this reconversion through Our Lady. But you see, that was not the happy ending. An Embrace Follows In came another miscarriage! The same hospital room, the same nurse…I’d ask Him: “Lord what are you doing? Why are you adding salt to the wound by replaying the most horrible day of my life?”  This was deeper and worse than before because I was also living through the trauma of some of those other losses. But in spite of this, I began to slowly see through that incredibly awful day in so many ways. As I was laboring and delivering, I was totally overwhelmed with grief and helplessly sobbing. But this time, instead of feeling completely alone, I felt the physical presence of Our Lady holding me like a mother would as I was crying. In the most painful part of labor, I felt Our Lady physically hand me over to God the Father and put me in His arms like His child. I felt, in that moment, God the Father sobbing along with me. I felt His chest heaving along with mine. I am not exactly ‘there’ yet. In some ways, I'm still on this healing journey, with this wound and all the anger that I carried…Our Lady came in as my mother to help heal my relationship with Our Father. For her to show His heart to me was just this incredibly healing and restorative process. A day which would have been one of the worst days of my life, because of her goodness and gentleness, became a healing day for us in a way that I never could have imagined.

The greatest evangelist is, of course, Jesus himself, and there is no better presentation of Jesus’ evangelical technique than Luke’s masterful narrative concerning the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The story opens with two people going the wrong way. In Luke’s Gospel, Jerusalem is the spiritual center of gravity— it is the locale of the Last Supper, the Cross, the Resurrection and the sending of the Spirit. It is the charged place where the drama of Salvation unfolds. So in walking away from the capital city, these two erstwhile disciples of Jesus are going against the grain. Jesus joins them on their journey—though we are told that they are prevented from recognizing Him—and He asks them what they are talking about. Throughout His ministry, Jesus associated with sinners. He stood shoulder to shoulder in the muddy waters of the Jordan with those seeking forgiveness through the baptism of John; over and again, He ate and drank with disreputable types, much to the chagrin of the self-righteous; and at the end of His life, He was crucified in between two thieves. Jesus hated sin, but He liked sinners and was consistently willing to move into their world and to engage them on their terms. And this is a first great evangelical lesson. The successful evangelist does not stand aloof from the experience of sinners, passing easy judgment on them, praying for them from a distance; on the contrary, she loves them so much that she joins them and deigns to walk in their shoes and to feel the texture of their experience. Prompted by Jesus’ curious questions, one of the travelers, Cleopas by name, recounts all of the 'things' concerning Jesus of Nazareth: “He was a prophet mighty in word and deed before God and all the people; our leaders, though, put Him to death; we thought He would be the redeemer of Israel; this very morning, there were reports that He had risen from the dead.” Cleopas has all of the 'facts' straight; there is not one thing he says about Jesus that is wrong. But his sadness and his flight from Jerusalem testify that he doesn’t see the picture. I love the clever and funny cartoons in the New Yorker magazine, but occasionally, there is a cartoon I just don’t understand. I’ve taken in all of the details, I’ve seen the main characters and the objects around them, I’ve understood the caption. Yet, I don’t see why it’s funny. And then there comes a moment of illumination: though I haven’t seen any further detail, though no new piece of the puzzle has emerged, I discern the pattern that connects them together in a meaningful way. In a word, I 'get' the cartoon. Having heard Cleopas’ account, Jesus say: “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets said.” And then He opens the Scriptures to them, disclosing the great Biblical patterns that make sense of the 'things' that they have witnessed. Without revealing to them any new detail about Himself, Jesus shows them the form, the overarching design, the meaning—and through this process they begin to 'get' Him: their hearts are burning within them. This is the second great evangelical lesson. The successful evangelist uses the Scriptures in order to disclose the divine patterns and ultimately the Pattern who is made flesh in Jesus. Without these clarifying forms, human life is a hodge-podge, a blur of events, a string of meaningless happenings. The effective evangelist is a man of the Bible, for the Scripture is the means by which we 'get' Jesus Christ and, through Him, our lives. The two disciples press Him to stay with them as they draw near the town of Emmaus. Jesus sits down with them, takes bread, says the blessing, breaks it and gives it to them, and in that moment they recognize Him. Though they were, through the mediation of Scripture, beginning to see, they still did not fully grasp who He was. But in the Eucharistic moment, in the breaking of the bread, their eyes are opened. The ultimate means by which we understand Jesus Christ is not the Scripture but the Eucharist, for the Eucharist is Christ Himself, personally and actively present. The embodiment of the paschal mystery, the Eucharist, is Jesus’ love for the world unto death, His journey into godforsakenness in order to save the most desperate of sinners, His heart broken open in compassion. And this is why it is through the lens of the Eucharist that Jesus comes most fully and vividly into focus. And thus we see the third great evangelical lesson. Successful evangelists are persons of the Eucharist. They are immersed in the rhythms of the Mass; they practice Eucharistic adoration; they draw the evangelized to a participation in the body and blood of Jesus. They know that bringing sinners to Jesus Christ is never primarily a matter of personal witness, or inspiring sermonizing, or even exposure to the patterns of the Scripture. It is primarily a matter of seeing the broken heart of God through the broken bread of the Eucharist. So prospective evangelists, do what Jesus did. Walk with sinners, open the Book, break the Bread.

Ever heard of the term cotyledon? As a seed germinates, these are present just beneath the seed coat, providing food for the embryo to grow. They are crucial for the plant’s initial growth, but this role has a very short duration. Once the baby plant grows in size, develops more leaves, and begins the process of photosynthesis, the cotyledons will shrink and disappear. We see the flourishing plant parts and little or no thought is given to the life-preserving cotyledons that once sustained the baby plant from withering in its vulnerable stage. Sometimes, we can also play the role of a cotyledon in others’ lives. It might be for a short period, but it can be very crucial in sustaining someone’s faith, self-assurance, or even their life itself. Without grand gestures or visible miracles, you can play a very significant role with simple daily acts of love, kindness, and compassion.