Lord, as I stroll around the grounds where your dear old mom made friends with an illiterate fourteen-year-old who liked to hang out at the town dump, living my way through a haggard week of pilgrimage, I ask that you mold my heart to the whims and movements of the hearts of others, and make their prayer my own.
Those older brothers and sisters of ours who have attended the Holy and Sacred Dinner Party at least thrice a week, for decades, and yet somehow haven't managed to find the time to learn their revised lines, which I suppose have only been changed six years ago, which probably doesn't sound like as much time to them as it does to me: make their prayer my own.
Sweet, feisty Kitty Murphy, who came to Lourdes with countless prayer intentions for her children and her children's children and her children's children's children but without her dentures, which she somehow forgot in Cork: make her prayer my own.
The nineteen-year-old volunteers who spend all day on their feet pushing wheelchairs and smiling and cleaning toilets and listening to stories multiple times and doing dishes, and yet insist on the nightly ritual of ensuring that there are more drinks than hours of sleep, the overexuberant fools: make their prayer my own.
Joseph, the young pilgrim who carries an Irish flag everywhere he goes, and who is so overcome with joy at the sight of the tiny teenage Queen of Angels that he actually, literally pumps his fist in the air like Tiger Woods on the 18th green at Augusta, only it's even cooler and more passionate and fuller of life than that: make his prayer my own.
The woman who read the last of the petitions at the international mass, the one in German, or maybe it was Dutch, I honestly couldn't understand a lick of it, but she read that prayer like it was the most sacred and joyous and important thing anyone had ever asked her to do, and so I understood perfectly: make her prayer my own.
The swarm of prepubescent scarves and berets and cigarettes who happened upon my girlfriend and I, trying to have just one single quiet moment together in France, for crying out loud, but they gamely shuffled along up the hill to leave the two of us with only the stars and the crickets and the wind and each other: make their prayer my own.
The curmudgeon in the chasuble who looks like he's mentally enumerating the vast number of places in this world he would rather find his curmudgeonly self, only he lost count, and is apparently so adrift in his own tragic daydream that he doesn’t even say the words as he hands me God Hidden in the Wafer: make his prayer my own.
The snail we found next to the big rock by the river, who was taking his sweet time moseying across the path, carrying his giant house on his back and inspiring a mini-litany of Very Important Questions like where do snails get their shells, do they grow them or scavenge for them, and where do you reckon this particular fella is headed, and do you think he has a wife and kids, or maybe a husband and kids I guess what would his prayer intention be, because of course snails have prayer intentions, they aren't monsters: make his prayer my own.
Kate, the seven-year-old seraph with a magical imagination that speaks into being new ways of passing time on airplanes, and her Guardian Angel of a grandmother, who seems really to be more companion and friend than guardian; they won't tell you about the leukemia until you finally ask, probably because Kate just doesn't find it to be one of the more interesting or noteworthy parts of who she is: make their prayer my own.
The unnamed, sweaty, mop-headed cherub who refuses to relent in his joyous stomping around, no matter how old and holy this Basilica is or how many people try to shush him: make his prayer my own.
The two Buddhist monks, bald heads shimmering and orange robes blazing, who wander into the crypt, march to the space just in front of the altar, and take photographs of the tabernacle; maybe they got lost and wound up here by some series of haphazard and hilarious hijinks, or maybe theirs is a wisdom that motivates them to come to France and take pictures of a golden box where we claim to keep the paper-thin presence of the Almighty, just for the craic, like: make their prayer my own.
The woman silently scuttling along, leatherbound book in hand, praying the Stations of the Cross in the morning drizzle; she's a sturdy wisp of a woman, eerily reminiscent, in fact, of my own grandmother, though it couldn't be her, obviously, we lost her three years ago after nine decades of the sturdiest years any woman could endure this side of the sturdiest woman there ever was, the one who wears a gold crown in Fatima and a blue field of stars in Mexico, who is of course the model for my late grandmother, and this woman praying the Stations, and for all of us, I suppose: make her prayer my own.
The gentleman in the rosary procession whose phone began to ring right in the middle of the second decade, only instead of noticing it immediately, he let it ring for several seconds before realizing it was his own phone and finally removed it from his pocket, only instead of turning it off and chucking into the river from embarrassment (which is probably what I would have done), he actually answered the blessed thing, only instead of quickly explaining to the person on the other end that he was in the middle of a very serious and traditional and holy ritual and would ring back later, this Blessed Child of God launched into a full-fledged conversation, making plans for this Friday evening, of course, and the only thing I knew how to do was smile and laugh and shake my head and say, “Mother of God, pray for us,” which I’m quite certain she did, that is, of course, just as soon as she finished smiling and laughing and shaking her head herself: make his prayer my own.
Margaret, whose accent was so thick that I’m 87% certain she was actually speaking another language entirely; and Roger, who is staying at the fancy hotel up the town with his parents, thank you very much; and Maurice, who always has his pipe, some tobacco, and a match on hand, just in case; Bernadette, who no matter how many times I tried to explain it still couldn’t figure out how and why I’m not in formation for the priesthood; and Michael, who is brilliant and a former teacher and a great lover of the game of baseball, which is of course no coincidence, given the first two factoids; and all these holy women and men who made pilgrimage to Lourdes, and showed me the face of Jesus: make their prayer my own, make their prayer my own, make their prayer my own, O Lord.
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