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Twenty-three years ago, when my father died my younger brother and I talked about our knowing that Dad had prayed for us daily and we admitted to each other that, other losses associated with his death aside, this was a loss we both felt keenly.
When my mother died recently, once again, the loss of one we knew who prayed for us daily without fail was a bitter blow. One of the memories we shared together as a family and heard from others who had known her was about her life of prayer. Everybody who knew my mother knew that she began her day with a lengthy period of prayer and Scripture reading which she referred to as her ‘devotions’. Her daily prayer list was long, her own children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are 29 souls alone and she prayed for many more people than her own family.
My brothers and I, and friends of the family, told each other stories of all kinds of people who Mum prayed for including those who weren’t churchgoers or even particularly religious but who requested my mother’s prayers nonetheless. And many commented on how she seemed to remember everybody she prayed for and would follow up to find how people were getting on. A request for prayer from Mum was not a transaction but the beginning of a relationship.
Less than 48 hours before she died Mum admitted to me that she hadn’t been able to complete her usual devotions and had resorted to committing her prayer list to God as a group instead of as individuals. It felt like a role reversal but I tried to reassure her that God would understand and accept her prayers in any way she was able to make them. As a way of sharing my life of prayer with Mum I said Morning and Evening Prayer, and Compline at her bedside and, although Anglican worship was another language for her she always joined in on the Lord’s Prayer.
Since Mum’s death I have been focused, not unsurprisingly, on the loss her death represents. I found myself wondering about the people on her prayer list and worrying who would pray for them now? I also noticed that it was hard to break my habit of praying for my mother at specific times of the day. I would catch myself every time and think she must now be beyond the need or even the reach of my prayers. It all left me feeling vaguely unsettled.
I don’t know how many times in my life I have said the Apostle’s Creed and stated confidently “I believe in the communion of saints.” If you asked me what I meant I would have said something about all those who identify as Christian both past and present, those whom the church recognizes a capital ‘S’ saints and those whose names are known to God alone, somehow being with us while not actually present. And I don’t know why something seemingly so basic got pushed to the side of my mind although I suspect I was looking so intently at the trees that I neglected to see the forest. Fortunately, as so often happens the Holy Spirit used the written word to nudge me in a different direction.
For several months now I’ve been working my way through a book about prayer, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy by J. Neville Ward. Ward was a Methodist minister who, eager for new ways to pray, turned to the discipline of the rosary. He writes briefly about his own experience of using the rosary to pray and offers meditations on each of the mysteries. Reading Ward has been a lengthy process, not because it is a slog but because I find him so thought-provoking.
Ward writes, “The community of faith…is infinitely vast, stretching through time as well as space. Christians who have died still belong to the one great Christian family and are believed to be still occupied in the great purpose of learning faith and love within it. They loved us, we loved them, when they were here. In Christ we know that all that loving can still go on, that there is nothing to stop this mutual grace and joy…God does not change his will for those who have died, nor does he withdraw the Spirit from them. They have it still, to use in loving. So we continue to love them and pray for them, and we believe they love us and pray for us.”
I said earlier that asking for my mother’s prayers was entering into a relationship and this quote reminds me that those relationships Mum began in her life through prayer somehow continue even now. It’s not one of the official mysteries but it is a mystery to me, full of both joy and sorrow.
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