Happy Birthday, Mom! And thanks for the prayers!

I am often amused and thankful for the Holy Spirit in my life!  I thank Him today for the inspiration He blessed me with for my post today.  I was planning to post a happy birthday message in honor and memory of my mom on Facebook, but I didn’t want to post just a simple Happy Birthday, Mom!

So the Spirit guided me through prayer to look at some of my early blogs written almost ten years ago right after Mom passed away.  As I read one of the posts, a thought occurred to me:  “I wish Mom was still here so I could get her a gift, she would come to visit the grandkids, and we’d have a great time!”  What irony?  Here I was, trying to come up with a special “gift” for my Mom, and the Holy Spirit hits me upside the head with the realization that she’s already received the ultimate gift from Jesus, Himself! 

Then I realized, what better gift could I give her than to remind everyone who knew her of the gift that she herself was? 

The post I was reading was a rough draft of what would eventually become part of the eulogy for her funeral mass.   Here it is:  

 The Gospel of Luke Chapter 18, verses 1-8: The parable of the persistent widow

Then Jesus told them a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. He said, “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’

For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.’”  The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them?  I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

We should all be grateful that Mom was such a warrior when it came to prayers.  How many of us drag ourselves back home after work each night wanting to say prayers finding that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak as we try to get our prayers said? How many of us have fallen asleep while saying the rosary?

Mom, on the other hand, had a regular regimen. She prayed the Liturgy of the Hours every day for as long as most of us can remember. She said a minimum of 3-6 rosaries a day, and at 3 PM every day she would drop everything to recite the Divine Mercy prayers.  So many of my discussions with Mom revolved around one novena or the other that she was praying on behalf of her children or grandchildren.  At her age she considered it her “job”, and she rarely “called in sick”.  When she had problems keeping her schedule, she worked twice as hard in the next few days to “catch up.”

When you think of Mom’s prayers, you should realize what an example she was for all of us.  Her prayer regimen was like the beginning of a flight on a commercial airliner.  Usually, while taxiing to the runway, the flight attendants will explain the safety features of the aircraft.  In case of the loss of cabin pressure, the oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling above you. You’re supposed to put your own mask on first, then turn to help the others around you, especially the small children and elderly. Mom’s many rosaries and novenas were not for HER sake, but for those of us who haven’t put our own masks on yet and expressed our love of God and neighbor through the prayers our Blessed Mother has asked us to pray.  Mom felt it was her duty to “breathe” for us until we learned to do it for ourselves.

And our “personal Prayer Warrior” was very busy!

For fun, I ran the numbers, considering just the rosaries she had said.  She usually prayed between 3 to 6 rosaries a day.  Let’s be conservative and say 5.  That’s 35 rosaries a week, 140 a month or 1,680 per year.  This was her regimen for at least the last 10 years of her life (probably 20, but we’re being conservative), so that’s 16,800 rosaries said on the behalf of her family!  If you break that down to individual petitions—after all, a prayer is a petition for intercession—there are 6 Our Fathers, 53 Hail Marys, and 6 Glory Bes to every rosary, in addition to the Hail Holy Queen(1).  That’s a total of 66 individual prayers during each rosary.  Are you ready for the total number of prayers she has said on our behalf in the last 10 years of her life?  Drum roll, please……. 1,108,800. That’s over ONE MILLION prayers, boys and girls!  Not counting Masses and weddings and funerals and Liturgy of the hours.  And that’s just 10 years!  And no one that truly knew Mom thinks she had prayed this hard only in her last 10 years. If you speak to anyone who really knew her over the last 70 years or so, the testimony you will hear is how she was such a prayer warrior all of her life, and how we were all helped at one time or another by her prayers.

“And when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” 

He will if Mom had anything to say about it!  And I’m quite sure He found it in His servant Angela.

 

Happy Birthday, Mom!