A Book Full of Names

This Sunday is Mother’s Day in the US and I will leaf through my mom’s prayer book. It holds much more than its worn pages of prayers. I will see a few faded family photos and a yellowed Erma Bombeck newspaper column, entitled If I Had My Life to Live Over. A fragile bookmark is signed Love, Lila. That’s from my mom’s aunt, Sister of Saint Joseph Loyola Guider who died in 1948. There is an index card in mom’s writing, A Prayer for Husbands and Wives. There is a clipping of a letter to the editor written by my brother Stephen. There are death notices for my sister and my father. 

Mom’s prayer book still breathes relationships and connections. Her prayer, like her life, was full of names. She told me once that when she prayed at night, she would simply name each of her loved ones and ask God to take care of us. 

For many North American churches, it is also Good Shepherd Sunday. Like God, our Good Shepherd, mothers know us and call us by name. And, this Sunday, there is another shepherd on believers’ minds. By the time you read this reflection, we will know the name of the next Bishop of Rome. Let’s add his name to our own prayer. May he be a shepherd like Jesus, like Francis. May he be a shepherd like Brazilian Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga who wrote four days before his death:

At the end of the road, they will say to me:

Have you lived? Have you loved?

And I, without saying anything, will open my heart full of names.

Peace,

Susan Schantz SSJ