Anniversaries, Stories, and #popeindc

So I’m going to the canonization Mass tomorrow. And I still am totally stunned… and totally grateful.

The way I got the ticket was 100% God. It wasn’t because I write about things Catholic, including two books about women saints and ongoing contributions to a major devotional, Living Faith. It was because my parish of two thousand families held a drawing for the four tickets it received (two sitting, two standing) and my name was drawn first.

It was fifty years ago around this time that I sat in Miss Minnie Moxness’s fourth grade class at Hawthorne Elementary School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and learned about Father Junipero Serra, the founder of numerous Spanish missions in California.

It was ten years ago around this time that I had my bankruptcy hearing and shortly thereafter learned that after garnishment, my monthly take-home pay for the foreseeable future would be less than eight hundred dollars. It seemed impossible, given I was recently separated from the man who had been my husband for nearly twenty years, living in a place where I knew almost no one outside of work and my sister, with whom I live. It was also at this time ten years ago that I was participating in a weekly program from the Paulists called Landings, where those away from the Church have a safe place to ask questions about Catholicism. Having been away thirty-three years, I had a lot of questions.  I knew nothing in my life was working, and my friends who had God seemed to weather storms better than those who didn’t.

Pretty amazing, the things God has done for me. And yet, if you had told me five months ago as I was struggling mightily with an issue of obedience that I would be among those sitting in the crowd for Serra’s canonization, perhaps even catching an actual glimpse of Pope Francis in the flesh, I would have laughed out loud.

So I’m going to the canonization Mass tomorrow. I’ll be offering it up for the women who facilitated the parish Landings program… and for each person in attendance and the story of how God led him or her there.

For more reports and reflections on the Pope’s visit from members of the Mid-Atlantic Conference of the Catholic Women Bloggers Network (CWBN), please visit “A Walk In Words With Pope Francis.”