From The Mind of Susy

Susy Clemens was born in 1872, and of all Clemen's children, she was, arguably, his favorite.  She had a way about her that would make us modern folk describe her as eight going on 18.  Or more accurately, eight going on 38.   She exhibited in her too short a life insight and wisdom beyond her years, and a gift for stating the complex intricacies of the world in plain, meaningful language.  When she was but eight years old, she formulated the following, taken from the autobiography of Mark Twain:

For a week, her mother had not been able to go to the nursery, evenings, at the child's prayer hour.  She spoke of it - was sorry for it and said she would come tonight and hoped she could continue to come every night and hear Susy pray, as before.  Noticing that the child wished to respond but was evidently troubled as to how to word her answer, she asked what the difficulty was.  Susy explained that Miss Foote (the governess) had been teaching her about the Indians and their religious beliefs, whereby it appeared that they had not only a god, but several.  This had set Susy to thinking.  As a result of this thinking she had stopped praying.  She qualified this statement - that it, she modified it - saying she did not now pray "in the same way" as she had formerly done.  Her mother said, "Tell me about it, dear."

"Well mamma, the Indians believed they knew, but now we know they were wrong.  By and by it can turn out that we are wrong.  So now I only pray that there may be a God and a heaven - or something better."

I wrote down this pathetic prayer in its precise wording at the time in a record which we kept of the children's sayings and my reverence for it has grown with the years that have passed over my head since then.  Its untaught grace and simplicity are a child's but the wisdom and the pathos of it are of all the ages that have come and gone since the race of man has lived and longed and hoped and feared and doubted.

True that.  Amen.

Mark Twain Quote: "Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing came of it.  She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it.  But it warn't so.  I tried it.  Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks.  It wern't any good to me without hooks."  (Huckleberry Finn)

....They Do Their Thing

But I shall assume, for the purpose of serious miracles, that people pray a lot to St. Giles or St. Aldegundis for a cancer cure.  Heart problems are directed to St. John of God.  Breast cancer pleas go to St. Agatha.  And the list goes on. I must also assume that countless numbers of people have dutifully followed this route. I would go so far as to pose that saints are continuously inundated with requests from desperate persons, every hour of every day.

And yet it seems to me that the authorities search long and hard to verify just 2 miracles.  Most saints only get their stripes after a long and arduous process.  But, on occasion, find those miracles they do, which must mean, by definition, that saintly intervention can cure people.

Now I have prayed mightily for friends and strangers, and begged the saints for intervention.  But alas, the people I want to live, don’t.  The ones whose conditions I beg to be improved, aren’t.  Overall, I think I have a dismal record of convincing any saint that those for whom I pray are worthy of their consideration.  Yet, they are good, decent folks who deserve much better than they are getting.

I am certain I am not alone in my frustration.  After years of simply accepting the results, I have grown impatient and reflective.   It began to dawn on me that this is true: many pray, few are answered.  So, I pondered, if they can cure people of earthly maladies, then why do they do it so selectively?

Let us role play.  Say I’m a saint, hanging out on my little cloud with all the other saints, part of the heavenly management team, and it’s “listen to prayers” time.  I bet I would hear scads of pleas floating up to me for my consideration.

Why, I wondered, would I ignore any of them?  Is it my job to sit in some kind of judgment?  And based on what criteria? Is that what saints are all about?  What kind of saint would that make me? Isn’t it my job to just simply help everyone?  Just why would I grant life (face it, that’s what we’re usually praying for – and it’s the basis for the 2 miracles) to one person, and refuse to help another? 

Now, in the spirit of fairness, these musings must apply to all persons.  But there is a special group of persons for whom this is absolutely applicable….children.

Now, I can almost begin to see the reasoning behind not helping older persons (partially on the assumption that they ain’t got long anyway, and perhaps saints, like cops, are on some kind of quota system). But how could any saint in good conscience not help a baby, or a toddler, or a little person? 

 I believe that more people pray to saints on behalf of little kids than for any other reason.  No saint will ever receive a more fervent, impassioned plea, than one from a desperate mother begging for intervention for her baby, even to the extreme of offering her own life for that of her child.  How any saint could fail to be moved to help in such a scenario is far beyond my comprehension.

If saints can, and do,  cure people of terminal illnesses and fatal conditions, then there should be no baby, no toddler, no little person, dying in any hospital, anywhere.  Period.  And yet newspapers daily tell a different story.

So, there you have it.  To my admittedly limited intellect, that’s how I see things in the world of saints. Too simple?  Unrealistic?  Wrong focus? Not to me.  But I’m sure any novice theologian could blast holes in my reasoning with an argument that would have me believe that saving one person in 100 at the expense of the other 99 is really acceptable and part of the grand master plan.  If that be true, then a lot of people die every day waiting for a call back from their favorite saint, who, in my humble opinion, has their priorities upside down, and backwards.

Mark Twain Quote:  “Heaven goes by favor.  If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”