The sanctity of an ordinary life☀️🙏🏻

“Praying, smoking a few cigarettes and minding my own business’, Mary’s reply to me just now. The sanctity of an ordinary life! Mary is being cared for by kind staff and has been under somebody’s care for much of her long oftentimes painful life. I love to tell her that while she may not have got to live the kind of life she longed for and deserved, nevertheless with the passage of time she is fortunate and extremely blessed in her living.

As for us, yes we got to live our lives as we pleased, (for the most part), and yes, we have accrued much ‘stuff’ along the way, only nowadays, truth be told, we are enjoying shedding much of that ‘stuff’ from our lives. Trinkets!! 

Mary is further on up the road! Then I read; 

‘I have seen Christ in certain people who suffer much and still manage to have a sense of peace, and acceptance of things as they are, and even a finely developed sense of humour. I love seeing that in people, and I hope to see more of those things in myself as I get more used to being used up’. (Fr. David May/Restoration magazine)

What can I say!!

‘Youth and good health eventually give way to old age and sickness. But what keeps us ever new, ever joyful, is that each stage of life is a communion with our Lord, who is not impeded by limitations of age or health or circumstances from being fully Himself in us’. (Fr. David May/Restoration magazine)

Recently, I overheard a young lady reply re dental appointment for her mother who stood by her side: ‘If I cannot bring her, (for her appointment ), perhaps my sister will’. Poor lady! So much nicer had her daughter used the words ‘if I cannot accompany her……Our words are so very important!! Even if dear lady is enduring Alzheimer’s, (I have no idea), yes she most certainly would have forgotten but that does not mean she did not feel invisible in the moment. Hurt lodges within even when forgotten!!

St,Anne’s Holy Mass. Dear lady deep in Alzheimer’s worried and upset about many things. Consecration, as Father raises Sacred Host, lady relaxes, uttering aloud; ‘My Lord and my God’. All else in zigzag mode, but sure and certain of her Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Unforgettable!