Once again I write close to or on the day of a feast of the church, today being the feast of St Francis of Assisi. And you guessed, it is about St Francis, and the two recent Popes in my life.
You see, it was the day Pope Benedict announced his resignation, a Monday and a public holiday, when I happened to go for morning mass. At the end of mass our Assistant pastor conveyed to us the news that utterly shook my world. I loved Pope Benedict, like he was my own father. I was in love with his books, his writing, his words, his Encyclicals….The ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ series opened up a well of theological beauty to me I never before experienced. He was the solid ‘rock’ of the church and no matter what people said of him I admired him for his intellectual integrity and strength, his deep spirituality, even if as he said his physical strength was failing.
Uncannily, I felt abandoned! Orphaned even, and I could not stop the tears as mass ended. I only consoled myself by clinging to the side of Jesus my Good Shepherd and said ‘ultimately you my Jesus are the Head of the Church, you are my shepherd, my guide and my master and I should not be afraid.’ Throughout the morning I was sorrowful and went about with a heavy heart, like I lost a family member. I had the sensation that this great big ship, our church was sailing the rough seas suddenly without a captain. I thought I was consoled by saying Jesus you are my Shepherd, but I still sorrowed and couldn’t understand the plan of God. All I could do was constantly offer to God my prayers for him.
Then the second consolation happened: I picked up the mail in the afternoon and among the packages was a fat packet from CNEWA asking for a contribution and it included a gift for my Lenten prayer. It was the ‘Way of the Cross’ written by Pope Benedict. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I was sure this was a gift from heaven itself with God saying to me, ‘He is my son, pray for him at this hour’.
Then the second consolation happened: I picked up the mail in the afternoon and among the packages was a fat packet from CNEWA asking for a contribution and it included a gift for my Lenten prayer. It was the ‘Way of the Cross’ written by Pope Benedict. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I was sure this was a gift from heaven itself with God saying to me, ‘He is my son, pray for him at this hour’.
So all the more I prayed but I was still sorrowful and kept breaking into little sobs whenever I remembered. Then came the last and final consolation of the day, a DVD I just happened to have borrowed from the library on Sunday was on the life of St Francis and after all the little ones were put to bed I decided to watch it thinking, ‘Maybe St Francis will finally be able to console me.’ I knew that Francis was told ‘rebuild my church’ and while watching it I cried throughout praying to St Francis to once again come and rebuild the church, especially the empty and desolate churches of Europe and the West and like him to send a new Pope who would try and make peace in the Holy Land. I pleaded with him once again to hear my prayer and bring peace to my heart once more as he did when I was young and many times after. This greatly consoled me and I went to bed in peace.
St Francis is one I call my ‘first (Saint) love”! I was 17 years old in Bombay (now Mumbai), India when the poverty and misery around me made me spend many hours in the slums and attend anti-communalism marches. In my spirituality I discovered St Francis of Assisi and felt I found a saint who shared my soul. I decided to live my life in simplicity, adopting Mahatma Gandhi’s line “Live simply so that others can simply live’, to embrace poverty if it so chose me, and finding my own choices ultimately were of poverty. For example: I decided not to choose the glamourous path of becoming an Air-Stewardess, one that I thought of as a little girl and which then in India was one of the most lucrative jobs. But then I realised that I would be spending a great deal of time on my ‘looks’ and 5-star hotels. Of course I still loved travelling and still do but I couldn’t bear to spend my life like that. So I took up journalism, the other passion – to be an instrument of change in society.
I wrote about illegal quarrying, rapes of minors by politicians, stoning of adulterous women in the village, corrupt builders and nearly had court cases slapped on me. I had my articles documented, used by professors, used in Writ Petitions in the High Court – then I got married! There too I chose to stay with my in-laws and then to raise 3 little ones staying home to be with them. For many years I battled against leaving India emigrating to Canada 'for a better life' but succumbed when I realised that our stay was not permanent in my in-laws home.
I wrote about illegal quarrying, rapes of minors by politicians, stoning of adulterous women in the village, corrupt builders and nearly had court cases slapped on me. I had my articles documented, used by professors, used in Writ Petitions in the High Court – then I got married! There too I chose to stay with my in-laws and then to raise 3 little ones staying home to be with them. For many years I battled against leaving India emigrating to Canada 'for a better life' but succumbed when I realised that our stay was not permanent in my in-laws home.
St Francis has stayed close to me helping me honour my teenage commitment well into now my 43rd year of life. Not only are my possessions and needs few but my husband and I and our 5 children all live simply. There is not a single moment in our family life when we can say we are financially well off. But I believe in the promise of God, "Seek ye first the kingdom of the Lord and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."
While Bryan always worked for our daily bread, I looked after the children and home full time throwing in some free-lance writing and two years of working outside the home between my third and fourth child, we always took part in the life of the church, in the music ministry, teaching and since 2005 starting a family prayer ministry in the parish and city called "Families in Prayer and Community" (this will be a new blog entry) evangelising families - spouses, children, grandparents, singles, and the widowed.
It has always been a struggle and still is but we never go a day without our basic needs. In fact when ever life has been financially hardest it seems like the blessings from above have been the greatest. By poverty I also mean sickness and debility of body and mind. When we were expecting our 5th child in 2009, as with the 4th in 2007 I was so sick with severe hyperemesis and acidity that I was helpless to care for my family with no one but my husband to help. It was then that he got laid off -it was for a full year. Through a most amazing and impossible source we paid our mortgage when there was nothing left in the bank and all that time Bryan was home to care for me, for the new baby and our 4 kids; he even learnt to cook!
Every tough time like now, when we are waiting for over a year for our property in Surrey to be sold so we are free from a major debt, we see blessings falling on our family. Our two oldest sons then 15 and 17, went to the seminary in Mission BC to study and it seemed like all of us got spiritually fed from the abbey that entire year and it continues as the younger son does grade 11 at the seminary and the eldest attends a Catholic college studying Science on a full scholarship for the year! "Though Jesus Christ was rich, yet he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" 2Cor 8:9. Through our sharing in Christ's poverty, by looking 'to God who is our help', we become rich...in spiritual bounty!
While Bryan always worked for our daily bread, I looked after the children and home full time throwing in some free-lance writing and two years of working outside the home between my third and fourth child, we always took part in the life of the church, in the music ministry, teaching and since 2005 starting a family prayer ministry in the parish and city called "Families in Prayer and Community" (this will be a new blog entry) evangelising families - spouses, children, grandparents, singles, and the widowed.
It has always been a struggle and still is but we never go a day without our basic needs. In fact when ever life has been financially hardest it seems like the blessings from above have been the greatest. By poverty I also mean sickness and debility of body and mind. When we were expecting our 5th child in 2009, as with the 4th in 2007 I was so sick with severe hyperemesis and acidity that I was helpless to care for my family with no one but my husband to help. It was then that he got laid off -it was for a full year. Through a most amazing and impossible source we paid our mortgage when there was nothing left in the bank and all that time Bryan was home to care for me, for the new baby and our 4 kids; he even learnt to cook!
Every tough time like now, when we are waiting for over a year for our property in Surrey to be sold so we are free from a major debt, we see blessings falling on our family. Our two oldest sons then 15 and 17, went to the seminary in Mission BC to study and it seemed like all of us got spiritually fed from the abbey that entire year and it continues as the younger son does grade 11 at the seminary and the eldest attends a Catholic college studying Science on a full scholarship for the year! "Though Jesus Christ was rich, yet he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" 2Cor 8:9. Through our sharing in Christ's poverty, by looking 'to God who is our help', we become rich...in spiritual bounty!
March 2013: So each day to the election of the new Pope: ‘prayers and supplications’ went up, novenas late into the night and trusting in God, St Francis and all of heaven beseeched, and then each hour on Salt and Light TV was followed on my little notebook computer on the kitchen table. Black smoke, black smoke… WHITE SMOKE!! What delirious joy all over the world!! And then to my utter, utter surprise and almost disbelief, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio chooses the name Francis!!!!!
The rest is history…in the making!
I believe in the Communion of Saints and do not infer with any kind of certainty that it was my prayers to St Francis that helped the conclave and the Pope, but it was all of our prayers all over the Catholic world and most certainly those of beloved St Francis, all the Angels and Saints and the Holy Souls with whom we are united with in spirit in the One Body of Christ.
I believe in the Communion of Saints and do not infer with any kind of certainty that it was my prayers to St Francis that helped the conclave and the Pope, but it was all of our prayers all over the Catholic world and most certainly those of beloved St Francis, all the Angels and Saints and the Holy Souls with whom we are united with in spirit in the One Body of Christ.
Happy Feast St Francis!
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