A Blessing

Well, yesterday morning we went to church and as I mentioned in the last post, Cardinal Dolan said mass.

I had decided I wanted to go partially in the hopes of saying "Hi, I'm Jamie! I'm the one you've been praying for. Thank you!" or something of the sort. After mass, we met up with mom and dad. Mom had already spoke with him before mass and he said he wanted to meet me.

After mass, he was in the northax holding a baby, his great-nephew. The usual group of people was edging their way through to say hello, shake his hand, or speak to him. We slowly shuffled our way closer and finally he saw my mom, who he recognized from earlier obviously.

She told him I was Jamie, her daughter, and he immediately pulled me into him into a hug saying he had been praying so much for me. He put his hand around me and prayed over me, keeping me close to him, and then said something in Latin as he drew a cross on my forehead. I just kept thanking him. Then he was saying how he had read something about lung transplants just in the paper this morning, and he said "I understand you will be needing one sometime?" and asked where I would do that. I said here in St. Louis and again thanked him so much for his prayers, and I'm pretty sure he said he would continue to do so. Honestly the end is a little blurry. And with that, we moved on so the next person could speak with him.

Image from The Missourian, emissourian.com.

My mom was in tears, somehow I didn't fully cry, but wow! And the image Jeanne at work (the newspaper) took just truly captures the moment. What a special morning to start Thanksgiving with. I wish I knew what he said in his Latin blessing, but I'm not sure and so far my online search hasn't come up with much. The gospel about healing the leaper was quite appropriate for me, the homily Cardinal Dolan gave about gratitude and being grateful instead of entitled was great, and then to receive that blessing afterwards was a great start to the day.

It reminded me how much I'd really like to start almost every day by going to church. I'm hoping I can work that in, in the coming months as I have to change up my whole schedule. Maybe I'll start working at 9am so I can go to weekday mass on the days that I feel up to it. How wonderful would that be?