Living Monstrance

I had the privilege of volunteering as a Minister of Holy Communion in a Boston hospital for several years.  The hospital is a place where many people experience great darkness in life.  It is also a place where the Lord does some of the greatest things.

One day, before making visits, I decided to go to Mass and then meditate in prayer on the Visitation.  The connection is sort of obvious, isn’t it?  Making visits.  The Visitation.  A no-brainer, right?  For you, maybe, but it took me 5 years to get it.

What is the Visitation?  It is the mystery of Christ’s Life described in Luke’s Gospel where His mother, just miraculously pregnant with Him, makes haste to travel and visit her cousin Elizabeth.  See, Elizabeth also is pregnant with a miracle baby.  She is too old to have children, yet when Mary sets out to visit her, she is 6 months pregnant with John the Baptist.  A lot happens when they meet, and afterwards Mary stays with her for 3 months.

So I went to Mass and received the Lord in Holy Communion, and then meditated in prayer on this mystery after I got to the hospital, listening to the Lord.  Well, it just so happened this day that the chaplain sent me to a section of the hospital that is in another building altogether.  It was my first time going there for visits.  So, now carrying the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, I set out in haste to the other building.

When I arrived, I looked at my list of Catholic patients.  There were three floors to visit.  Two of these floors had a whole bunch of patients.  Then, there was the tenth floor, with one patient.  I thought, I have plenty of patients on the other two floors, I’ll just skip that one patient on ten and …. OK, OK, Lord, I’ll visit her first.

I had never been to the tenth floor before in this building.  When I got off the elevator I looked around to see where I was.  Then I saw the sign on the door:

“Labor and Delivery”

Gulp!

I had been to ICU, psych, trauma, transplants, the “tough” ones.  But labor and delivery is not guy territory, particularly a guy engineer.

I had never been to such a territory in my life.

But that’s exactly where He wanted me to go.

So in I went.

When I entered the floor, I could tell right away it was definitely not guy territory.  The sounds, the smells - you can guess.  I went up to a nurse and said, “Hi, I’m here for the patient in room 4.  Can I go in?”  She answered, “Are you here because of her situation?”  I said, “Um, no, I am just making regular visits.”  “Oh,” she said, “the patient is a little more optimistic than she should be.  Not many survive if they’re born before 26 weeks.  But let me check if she’ll see you.”  A few minutes later she came out and gave me the green light.

So I went in with the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

I saw this woman, who I can only describe as glowing.  After I introduced myself, she began to tell me about her situation.  She had just arrived the night before.  It was a sudden problem with her pregnancy, see she is 6 months pregnant as of yesterday and …

Suddenly, it struck me like lightning: I’m visiting a woman who is 6 months pregnant as of yesterday …The Visitation!  I’m living it!  She’s living it!  Her child is living it!  Her family is living it!

I was filled with so much joy.  I knew then how blessed this woman and her child are.  I told her so, and I told her about the mystery of the Visitation: “You know, I’ve been volunteering here for five years.  For the first time, I was meditating on the Visitation.  Mary is just pregnant with Jesus and she travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is too old to have children, but is 6 months pregnant with John the Baptist.  You know, I had to travel down the street to get to this building with Jesus in the Eucharist.  It is my first time doing regular visits in this building.  It is my first time ever to labor and delivery, and you are the first patient I am visiting today.”

She said, “Oh, I know about Elizabeth well, she was about 80 years old, right?  I’m too old to have children - my husband and I have tried to have a child for a long time now.  My child is the answer to our prayers.  We call her our miracle baby.”

I couldn’t contain the joy in me.  “John the Baptist had a very special relationship with Jesus.  Your child is so very special to Jesus.  You and your child are very blessed.  So very blessed.  It is a privilege to be with you.”

She described her resignation to God’s will, her and her husband’s complete abandonment to His plans.  What incredible faith and humility she had.  She was filled with such peace and joy.   She received the Lord in Holy Communion.  It was such a privilege to be with her and to bring the Lord to her.  I left her a Divine Mercy image to keep a memory of the Lord’s presence with her, and I left.

I didn’t say it, but I knew her child would live.  God doesn’t do things part way.  If He gives a mystery to be lived, He gives the whole mystery.  He keeps His Word.  And I knew that somehow, I would be visiting this family for the next three months.

Over the next 2 weeks, I came back to visit a couple of times each week, whenever I felt called.  It always seemed to be just when she needed support.  Now there was an emergency and she was moved up to an intensive care floor.  Then things stabilized and she was moved back down.  She always kept the Divine Mercy image with her.  “It seems like every time you come in, it’s exactly at the right time when I need support,” she told me.

Suddenly, at 26 weeks, her child had to be delivered prematurely.

Gone was the glow.  Gone was the optimism.  In came darkness and depression.  Why her?  What will happen to her child?  Why can’t it be a normal pregnancy?  And her marriage was now being tested.  She and her husband were already exhausted physically and psychologically.  Could it get any worse?

But I knew it would be her family’s greatest hour.

I knew her child would live.  I knew God was fashioning her into a great mother and a greater wife.  I knew He was making her husband a great father and a greater husband.  I knew God was doing something profound, and it was such a privilege to witness it.

She and her husband began visiting her little child each day, and as often as I felt called, I visited.  I listened to her, and I told her each time in the darkness what I saw, that the Lord was doing something great, that she does not see it, but I do.  Her family was exhausted.  She said, “Every time, it’s like God sends you at exactly the time that I need to hear what you say.  I always feel so much better after you visit.”

I kept visiting, and as time went by their child grew.  Hope began to return, and after two and a half months, it became clearer and clearer that their child just may make it after all.  And, I learned that three months after I first visited, my time was up, as I knew it would be.  I had been called now by the Lord to enter a Franciscan community, and it was time to go.

By my last visit, there were plans in place for bringing the little one home.  Everything was mysteriously falling into place.  She said to me in that visit, “You know, in that dark period, you kept saying, God is doing something great with you.  I have to tell you now, I was thinking, ‘He’s crazy!  This is great?  I can’t imagine anything worse!  What is he talking about?’  But you know what?  You were right.  God is doing something great.  I love my daughter.  She is special, she is unique, and I wouldn’t have wanted all this to go any other way.”

Listening to this story, maybe you wonder a little about me, maybe thinking I have some natural mystical powers.  But I have to say, I’m just an ordinary guy.  I have no formal schooling in theology or in pastoral care or in counseling or psychology.  I have no college degree in anything but mechanical engineering.  I grew up in the popular culture, in the modern American way, with drinking and sex and partying and addictions and career pursuits.  For many years, I didn’t go to church or pray.  How did this happen to me?  Where did I get all this?

It’s because Mary is now my Lady, and I am hers.  I have given my whole life to her.  I have given my whole self to her.  Now I know that sounds pretty dramatic, but it is true.  And look what she has given me in return.

The quote in the title of this weblog is the beginning of her Magnificat, the great canticle that she proclaimed to Elizabeth during the Visitation: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” (Lk 1:46-47)  Now, I can truly pray it in her, because I know how she felt and what she thought.

I know what she did those three months with Elizabeth - not because she explained it to me, nor because she gave me a book to read or a rule to follow, nor because I came up with a well-thought-out theory.  But because she gave me to live it myself.  Mary has given me more than I could have ever imagined.

She has given her whole life to me.

Happy Feast of the Visitation.