Luky;
AS CATHOLICS we confess that we believe in the communion of saints each time we recite the Creed. The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites two examples of the communion of the saints. It quotes St Dominic on his death bed as telling his grieving brethren: "Do not weep for I shall be more useful to you after my death, and I shall help you then more effectively than during my life." The other example given is St Therese of Lisieux's promise: "I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth".
Being of 1940 vintage myself, I was raised to venerate the saints and the angels. When something is lost I appeal to St Anthony. When a child is slipping from the straight and narrow I ask Sts Monica and Augustine for help. When the home maintenance falls apart I invoke the intercession of St Joseph the Carpenter, while St Theresa of Lisieux has rained many a rose down upon me from heaven. When money is tight I pray to St Matthew the tax collector and when my children lose their jobs I beg St Rita of Cascia to intercede for them. During my pregnancies I used to send frequent petitions for intercession to St Gerard Majella and I say the guardian angel prayer of my youth morning and evening. Our Lady, of course, is always invoked in the rosary. She our heavenly mother, is the greatest saint of all - yet she remains as humble and approachable as the littlest of saints.
If you do not always receive exactly what you ask from God through the intercession of the saints and the angels, their prayers will always lead to peace of mind and the resilience needed to make a new start. But is it only the canonised saints whose prayers on our behalf reach the Heart of God? Do not our own deceased parents, relatives and friends who are now in the company of God continue to pray for us and ask Him to shift or lessen our burdens?
It seems to me that not all people today have devotion to the saints and angels. Yet - from some accounts - when their parents die they often seem to address them in the same child-like way they employed as children. They believe - as I do - that their parents are still caring for them and will continue to do so until they get them safely into heaven.
In the two years after my father died I had two experiences which to date I shared with few people for fear of ridicule. As the years thunder by, I find myself less in need of human affirmation and respect and more in need of sharing good experiences with others. You never know when your story may heal a painful spot in the heart of another.
My father died in 1968. A year later my fourth child was born after a lengthy confinement which lasted two days and nights. I don't know at which point I began to sense my father's presence in my consciousness but it was this, I believe, which sustained me through what could otherwise have been a nightmare 48 hours. I cannot say I saw him but I felt his presence right beside me and seemed to hear his voice. He was not advising me to pray or endure - example rather than preaching had always characterised his style of bringing up his children - but he was there and kept me company in the long and lonely hours while my husband was at home, taking care of the other little ones when he was not at work.
One incident that stands out in my mind occurred when a nurse came in and made a joke with me. As she walked out, I was still laughing, as was my father. It struck me that she had spoken English, a language my Dutch father had never mastered. "Do you understand English now, Dad?" I asked him. In my twilight consciousness I understood him to say: "Where I am living now we don't speak any specific language but we understand every language that is spoken." Whatever explanation there may be of the presence I felt during my confinement, I'm sure I was too far gone in pain, fear and misery right then to have imagined such a luminous thought on my own. Once the baby came, the presence withdrew, but then I was holding my consolation in my arms.
Eight months later I was planting seedlings in my rocky garden where nothing but weeds ever seemed to flourish. "Dad," I said, "Please ask our Lord to bless my efforts in this garden and pray to him to send me a nice, colourful show of flowers this summer."
We were living in a house in South Africa that belonged to the company where my husband was employed. A few weeks later he was awarded a better house, with the loveliest garden I ever lived in. The privets all the way around provided privacy. In the middle of the lush lawn in front stood a massive mimosa tree, raising its yellow arms up to God's blue sky. Along the length of the driveway from the gate to the garage, grew a profusion of grapes. In front there were indigenous flowering shrubs, a breathtaking rose garden and a huge flowerbed with colourful annuals. Apricot, peach and fig trees grew in the back garden which also contained the tallest mulberry tree I have ever seen.
How my children loved that garden! They fed themselves and their friends on fruit, built a tree house in the mulberry tree and became the chief suppliers of mulberry leaves when silk worm fever raised its head among the student body of the school they attended a few blocks away. I'm afraid we let the garden run to seed somewhat but the memories those children built in that garden in those formative years remain evergreen. When I think of the joy I experienced of moving into the house with that wonderful garden I always thank my dad. My mother and my siblings also had some startling experiences after my father died - on the feast of the Assumption that year.
When our children or grandchildren turn their backs on God, we parents tend to wear ourselves out praying and fearing for them. As well as our own prayers, they need the intercession of the saints and angels we invoke - including our own parents and grandparents. We know how devotedly they prayed for us and our offspring during their lives on earth. We can only guess how fervently they pray for us now that the scales have fallen off their eyes and they find themselves in God's presence.
Many of our parents, parents-in-law, godparents and grandparents first taught us to live and then showed us to die, by bearing an agonising, debilitating disease in a spirit of Christian fortitude before dying fortified by the Church's Sacraments. As far as religion is concerned theirs was a strong generation, whose members passed on the candle of our faith to us, their children. If at times it seems that we may have failed to do likewise in respect of all of the next generation, surely their intercession for us and our offspring will not, in the end, prove to have been in vain.
*Photograph by Lumiere Charity volunteer Britain, used with kind permission. With thanks to the stained glass artist
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