Watching my mother pray in the soft light of our night lamp was calming. She only did it in the evening, after she prepared the stresses of our day to be managed tomorrow, never speaking a word as she laid out all the gently worn-down prayer cards she collected from her sisters back home, the iridescent rosary beads my grandmother gave her on her wedding day, all of it curated in an order that made sense to her. I didn’t say much the first time I saw this. I was just struck at how beautiful she looked. I tend to be high-strung and frazzled much like my mother, but in prayer, she radiated serenity. Prayer was more than monotonous repetitions of stilted, meaningless stanzas begging forgiveness. Each night I came back and for the next hour, I would read my books as she muttered her prayers.
We have always gone to mass on Sundays. I never understood what was going on, I just knew I had to be quiet and kneel, stand, sit as prompted. Most Catholics know the story, the timeline of Jesus Christ, Adam and Eve, the main stories that remind us that we are bad people and God somehow understood this flawed nature and compromised with us. After a while, it felt a bit trivial. Why follow this? What beliefs do these stories imdue in the hearer? How does this make me more empathetic, or just try to be a better person? We pour into the donation bin and listen to the homily as if we can abstract from the bible and apply it into our Western 21st century concerns. Where is the connection? The solidarity? This did nothing but disengage me from my faith.
Yet, my mother’s prayer felt sacred. Sitting next to her on the bed we share, I felt awe devour me in a way that left me humbled, enamored with the space around me and attuned to our communal practice. This was the feeling I expected when I entered our church. To an onlooker, our bedroom didn’t possess any sui generis artefacts that oozed holiness. All I can say is that when she prayed, it wasn’t out of a sense of fear or obligation. It was like well-wishing. The saints she prayed to are people that once existed, flesh-and-blood people that made a difference in their community. She told me stories of Jacinta, Francisco, Lúcia, of the women that persisted. What stood out to me was how wildly different each saint was. They did not adhere to a paradigm, they lived their life using whatever best fit their goal. Some were passionate, fiery, nearly self-destructive. Others were meek but never passive. I could see myself in their actions. I understood why my mother prayed. To remember these saints is to keep their spirit alive and call upon their strength, it’s a meditative act to embolden us in our day-to-day. Praying in this fashion didn’t feel so self-serving (e.g., I only pray x to get into y). It felt like an act of love.
I can’t speak for Catholicism as a whole. As is the case with most large institutions, there always runs rampant those who corrupt the ideology for selfish and cruel motives. The Catholic church is not a paradigm of perfect faith as we know the sorts of corruptions and evils it permitted (and still permits) to this day. However, the slice of Catholicism that strengthened my mother when she was a girl in Tras os Montes ultimately colors the values of my family. Such stories keep us anchored, a way to reorient our life with a kinder, empathetic lens.