Call Your Mom

This week, God keeps putting people in front of me who want or need prayers.   This person lost their mother and though it has been a few years, the grief keeps rearing up, reminding her that it feels fresh.  Another is going to care for her mother.  The stories come at unexpected moments, but they remind me, October is the month of the Rosary, the month to call on our most Blessed Mother, Mary, adoptive mother of all of us.

Praying the rosary is a discipline I find comes and goes in seasons. Sometimes, it’s easy.  My husband and I take the dog for a walk and we pray the rosary all the way through.  We wonder why it is a struggle.

Pumpkin says, “It’s easy to pray with me, because I’m so happy to be going for a walk.”

Then there are days when I take out the rosary and that’s about as far as it gets.   When I get insomnia –which mercifully is not often, I try to say it, but every Hail Mary feels like effort, and eventually I nod off.  In adoration, sometimes I wonder as I pray it, am I using the rosary to distract myself from adoration.  It’s easy to get too scrupulous about the prayer –to be too conscious of praying, as opposed to attentive to the prayers.

At those moments, I remind myself that Mary is a patient mother.  When my kids give me a blow by blow account of their day, I do not tell them to “skip to the end,” or “focus.”  I listen.  Mary does the same.   She doesn’t mind my laundry list or all the things that need doing that crowd my Hail Mary’s.   Her patience with my littleness of spirit, is one of her gifts.

When you keep encountering people asking for prayers, it’s the Holy Spirit telling you, call your Mother.

Pray for them. Don’t delay.  Mary understands their needs and brings them to her Son, and it brings both Him and her great joy, even more than the twenty vats of water that became wine.   She’s given us the rosary, with all four types of mysteries and all sixty-six plus prayers –depending on which type of rosary devotion you practice, to cover all the needs, all the circumstances.

I’m constantly stunned by how appropriate the mysteries are for the petitions I bring to her. It almost feels comic.   Having written all these words, knowing I’m trying to get back into the habit of a daily regimen of writing, I know what I must do next once I put in all the photos and tags and finishing touches to this reflection on October 14, 2024.

And as if to ensure that I didn’t forget the message, ignore it, or become distracted, my husband put on the Monday Night Football, Bills vs. Jets.   Within five minutes, both offensive lines pulled out long bombs for touch downs.  The announcers must have said a decade worth of references to the “Hail Mary,” and even mentioned, “Usually, this is a prayer.”   “Big Hail Mary’s, right before half time.”

Message received, “Big Hail Mary’s” at half time will be said.  It’s the right call.   Call your Mom.