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Little Edie was an elderly lady who spoke of Jesus, Our Lady and the saints as intimate friends. Her face lit up like a small child whenever they were mentioned in her presence. She had a rare kind of innocence which made you wish that you had never offended God with a sin in your whole life. Any mention of the devil horrified her. 'Oh, he's horrible!' she would exclaim. Edie looked forward to her Holy Communions with expectation and wonder. The Rosary was never far from her hand.
None of this must make us think that Edie lived in a kind of protected sanctuary. She endured painful ulcers on her legs for many years which kept her bed-bound and cut off from others. These ulcers resisted all medical remedies and emitted an unpleasant odour. They had forced her to remain house-bound in the living room of her small terraced house. Eventually she had to lose even this and move into a nursing home. However, she did not grumble. Her hallmarks were peace, love and a gentle joy which pointed one to Christ. What did trouble her was sin and atheism. When a lady in the nursing home died, days after stating that she did not believe in God, Edie was deeply troubled for the woman's soul.
As a young woman Edie had made a pilgrimage to Rome. Whilst there, she had seen and listened to Pope Pius XII. The reverence and happiness with which she described His Holiness was memorable. It bespoke a time when even popes were in awe of their office.
In 1997, I travelled to Lourdes to work as a brancardier. Edie was also in the convoy of vehicles as a patient. At a motorway service-station I boarded the 'Jumbulance' to check on Edie. Even though the long journey, by road and rail across two countries, was harrowing in her condition, Edie's face lit up when she spoke of the pilgrimage as a fulfillment of a long desire to visit Our Lady of Lourdes. The blessed memories of her visit to the Grotto of Lourdes sustained her for a long time after her return home.
One day in her nursing home, Edie told me that Our Lady had made the Sun spin in the sky for her. Rationalists would likely scoff, but had you met Edie it would seem almost normal for Our Lady to whirl the Sun like a child's spinning-top for such a devoted little one.
That was because entering the presence of Edie gave one a tangible sense of the proximity of Heaven. How wonderful such Catholics were!
We've mentioned Dick Edwards before, but it does no harm to remember such saintly souls. Â
Dick was a gentleman who lived into his early nineties. He befriended Dad several years earlier during Dad's search for the One True Faith. Dick used to attend Benediction and Stations of the Cross every Friday night of the year in the local parish. On the way he would meet Dad, give him a handful of toffees and walk with him to the Church.
Even on very stormy nights, Dick would turn up on time at the usual meeting point in his immaculate suit, tie and polished shoes. One night Dad suggested that this was an impressive achievement for a man of Dick's advancing years.
Dick's reply stayed with Dad and played a big part in his own journey into the Faith. Although it took many more years to hit home with me, it is an answer which I have never forgotten either.
Dick acknowledged that there were indeed many nights when he felt tired or cosily warm by the hearth. And true, he did not much feel like venturing out into the darkness, wind and rain of a cold winter night. But then he used to think on what it had cost Our Blessed Lord to go to Calvary and die on the Cross out of love for him and for his eternal salvation. Dick explained that this thought motivated him to make an act of love back to Jesus in gratitude for His love, grace and mercy.
Modernists, who wish to play down the existence of serious sin, deny the sinfulness of homosexual activity and contraception, or deny the indissolubility of marriage, overlook the words of Our Lord in Matthew 16:24-26, where Jesus gives the imperative to all who would follow Him to take up their Cross each day. The witness of people like Dick reminds us to return some love for such unmeasurable love.
In common with the other lay Catholics that we have considered this week, Dick drew his strength from Holy Mass, shared devotions, personal prayer and outreach to others. The lives and faith of these people were so fruitful because they accepted and received the Church as She is in Her nature. They did not try to reinvent the Church to suit their own ends, to give them power or to become popular with the world. Rather they lived from her sacraments and the many other means the Catholic Church gives us to reach our Heavenly home. This is the very essence of humility.
Years ago, one would likely meet many souls like these; Catholics who had received a good foundation and formation in their home, parish and school. They were well equipped for the pilgrimage and the spiritual warfare which constitute this earthly life. They emanated holiness and virtue. The sheep then did not reek of the world but were imbued with the fragrance of Christ. This was a mystery which drew people to the Church and to the salvation and sanctification Christ gives through Her. People like my family, who came in to the Church from the outside, can tell the difference a mile off between this authentic Catholic spirituality and attempts to impose a worldly bureaucracy on the Church. This is too frequently being done to facilitate dissent, the acceptance of sin and worldliness. The attempts by Modernist prelates, priests and lay intelligentia, to bring the Church into line with the mores of an atheistic and secularist society are evangelizing no-one.
If the Church is to persist and flourish in the West, then we need to become what we already are, rather than continually try to reinvent the wheel with the latest novelty. It will start if each one of us asks God to convert our own hearts. It will continue through the restoration of the Sacred Liturgy, Orthodox Catechesis, authentically Christocentric-Trinitarian prayer and a truly Christian communal life; which neither compromises with sin, nor pushes away sinners. We must accept Christ as He already truly is - the King of our hearts, our Church and our world.Â
May God give us the grace to do so.
