ALL SAINTS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN - SOME KNOWN ONLY TO GOD

 Looking for women saints to be role models.  Some of us need to look no further than our own mother.

I suppose it is a cliche to say that "My mother was a saint,"  But mine would pass the test.

  On All Saints Day, November 1,  I woke up thinking that there are many Saints that have never been canonized. Saints known only to God and to those of us who were close to them in this life. That HOLY  DAY -- ALL SAINTS-- IS THEIR Day.

My mother was endlessly patient with my two sisters who had Down Syndrome,  She always urged me to see my sisters as a Divine Gift,  She  often said that when we died and stood before God His one question would be--

HOW DID YOU TREAT THE TWO ANGELS I SENT TO YOU?"

I am aware that this is not the way people speak now  of children with Down Syndrome. They  refer to them as Disabled or Intellectually challenged. Styles and terms changed, but the the reality of our life with Janie and Sheila was an unyielding factor in every moment of every day of our lives.

  My mother became aware of the crusade of an Irish Priest, Father Peyton, to encourage the daily rosary in family life.

She adopted his slogan--

THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER

She  instigated a habit of daily prayer. She made an altar shelf on my bedroom  wall and tacked a blue skirt with white lace around it. She placed a statue of the Blessed Virgin there, and each night we knelt on the floor before that altar and said the Rosary. 

My  mother urged me to carry the rosary beads in my coat pocket and say the Hail Mary's as I went through the day.  She also encouraged me to visit every Catholic Church that I went past to say  a greeting to Jesus in the Eucharist  on the altar.

Joan Chittiser in a recent posting describes a childhood that echoes with my own.

I spent a lot of my young life making regular visits to church, trying to identify my place in the pantheon of saints. When the light streamed brightest through the colorful church windows and the great nave was empty, I walked up and down the aisles stretching my neck to study the glass figures, trying to discover what the pictures had to say to me about my own journey on earth. I looked always and forever for women saints, of course. They were painfully few. St. Martin, yes. St. George, of course. Sts. Peter and Paul and twelve apostles were everywhere there for the boys. None of them fit the identity I felt growing within me. The few small windows of women saints that were there, though no one talked about them, were important to me. After all, if even only a few women were there, were given places of honor in those windows—well known or not—it had to be possible for me to be there too.

 
The truth is that it’s important to know who our heroes are and what it is that binds us to them if we ourselves are to form a strong sense of self.
 
Social psychologists tell us that the development of distinct identities carries us through life. Without models to steer by, Cote and Levine discovered, we may never become the fullness of ourselves.  Instead, we stand to become unsettled and only partially developed adults. As a result, we may refuse to enter adulthood at all and become dependent on others. We can begin to drift through life, settling down nowhere and doing nothing of lasting value for anyone. As perpetual searchers, we go through life perpetually dissatisfied. Or, on the other hand, we may so internalize the past that we are incapable of change in a continually changing world.
 
The church at one time mandated that the names of saints were to be part of the baptismal rite. Then, forever reminded of the great heroes of the faith who have gone before us, the child had a personal standard to steer by. It would, in other words, become part of their identity.
 
My list of holy heroes at this stage of life is too long to recount. They are everywhere. Nevertheless, Joan of Arc and Teresa of Avila emerged in me somewhere along the way in my early childhood and hold a privileged place in my heart to this day.

I too searched for women saints and I  also found Teresa and Joan and chose Teresa for my confirmation name.
 

I don't want to leave you with the impression that my mother was always praying or urging  me to pray.

Quite the contrary, she had enormous energy. She worked a second shift factory job from 3 to 11 PM.  She got up at 6 Am to get me and my sisters up and dressed and ready for school. She made us breakfast and packed my sister's  lunches.

I walked to school and at noon I walked home for lunch and then back to school by 1pm When I got home at 3:30pm, my mother had already left for her work.   I would often see the evidence of her daytime  efforts. She   painted and papered every room in our tenement and transformed the space.  She taught herself to paper and she  improved our home enormously.  

My mother was very sociable and cheerful.  She had a lovely singing voice and she sang Irish songs often. I learned them all from her. I have already written about the  "SHOWS" she urged me to stage with my sisters.

In 1973 we finally travelled to Ireland and  connected with the  family and friends that my mother's parents had bid adieu in 1904.

I remember coming back home to Pawtucket on the plane;  she took my hand and said --

 "WELL WE HAVE CLOSED THE CIRCLE  THAT FAMINE AND POVERTY BROKE, AND WE ARE A WHOLE FAMILY AGAIN."