September ladies.👭

Walking home from Holy Mass in the warm September sunshine, I encountered  two delightful ladies. I wondered aloud if they would allow me take their photograph in that perfect setting. Joan agreed, Mary declined in the most generous manner. ‘I hate photos’, she said, fixing her perfect hair. ‘Would you be really upset’, I asked, and with all the gravity it deserved, she replied, ‘I would’, still smiling, concerned only that she might have offended me.

‘I always hated my photo taken too’, I said. ‘In fact I used to cut myself out of pictures. Not anymore, God put in my heart that He makes no mistakes in our creation, we are all perfect in His eyes. Could this be the day you are receiving a healing Mary?’ She simply whispered - ‘God knows’. 

A local man died suddenly last night, instead of a photograph, we prayed Hail Mary for his soul. It felt so right. We all agreed that our prayer was much more beneficial and perhaps that was God’s plan from the outset. Kindness like snow beautifies everything, good always comes from encounters with kind generous folk.

I felt elated as I took leave of them both. They had no idea how much our chance meeting affected my day, if I told them they would laugh in disbelief. Just as little children give love unknowingly, expecting nothing in return, so did my September ladies give to me this day, I am truly grateful.

‘There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy’. (Robert Louis Stevenson)