Be Not Idle

One of my favourite people is Pat who runs Celebration of Faith, a Catholic bookstore in St. Clair.  About a month ago, I stopped in and she gave me a statuette of St. Anthony. She wouldn’t allow me to pay for it. She said that’s the deal she has with St. Anthony. She’s asked him so many times to pray for her and her family, and she’s seen that he’s tireless in his intercession. So she gives away his paraphenalia.

I thought it was very cool that St. Anthony is one of her “prayer friends”. I used to have a few in college, mostly other young people in the Navigators’ Bible study group. They were the people I could ask to pray with me or for me.

I was never great at asking saints to pray for me. I’d call on St. Andrew from time to time when I was kid. (Usually when in a boat.) I had a feeling that they were very busy with God. Seemed a shame to interrupt them. I prayed the Rosary, of course, but that was more a meditation on Christ than asking for anything.

So the angels took the brunt of interceding when I had no one else to pray with me. St. Michael got a lot of desperate calls late at night when spooky sounds or general oddness abounded.  And my poor guardian angel! My mother’s grandmother had told her, and she passed it onto me, that if you began the Rosary at bedtime and fell asleep, your angel would finish it for you. Poor Phred must have covered 9/10 of every Rosary I prayed before I hit puberty. (Phred is my guardian angel. When I was a kid, someone got it into my head that guardian angels have names. I hope mine has a sense of humour.  

 But it’s a relatively new thing for me to ask the saints to pray for me. It’s really only been since I moved to this area. There are more Catholics around here, but I haven’t really become a part of my parish. Ironically, I know more people at the daily Masses in a neighbouring community, since so many older volunteers are Catholic.

Anyway, I’ve had St. Anthony’s statuette in a box since then, languishing on a coffeetable. I was looking for a good place to put it. I have the Holy Family on a bookshelf in the livingroom, surrounded by family photographs – which makes perfect sense the more I think about it.

Pope John Paul II said it often that young people need Jesus. I have a student who is a senior. I’ve had him in class less than 15 days, but it’s clear that he’s troubled in his heart.  Other students have plans for the future – sometimes totally unrealistic or intentionally hyperbolic plans – but he doesn’t want to think about it.

Sometimes my students will express the wish that school would be over and they could do something more interesting. More often than not, “interesting” means hanging out with friends and/or doing nothing in particular. But many of the  seniors  become anxious when they realize that school doesn’t last forever. They have to make plans and do something because they want to, not because they’re being forced by laws or their parents.

One of my collegues commented, “There’s something wrong when students have no goals; they imagine no future.”  In other words, they have no hope.

It’s not just the “at-risk” kids who feel hopeless. Sometimes they are students who have a lot going for them, but seem depressed or lacking in self-confidence. I often wonder if they are longing for something less material than what usually ends up in the “futureography” essays: “good-paying job”, “lots of friends and parties”, etc.  Someone who gives them hope.

 So this young man is going to become my special prayer intention during Lent. I scarcely know him, but I know he’s hurting.