When A Relic Comes Into Your Home

 For a while now, I have been feeling what I refer to as "uncomfortably comfortable." It's not an unsettling feeling; after all, everything in your life is good and seems to be in place. Health? Good. Finances? Good. Job? Good. Marriage? Good. Kids? Good. A former pessimist by nature, I do have these pangs of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and that these times have the potential to be a kind of 'eye of the hurricane.' As anyone knows, the eye of the hurricane is deceptively calm, but a dangerous place to be, since just on the wall outside of it is the most vicious part of the storm cloud. When it starts to move, and you're not in the eye anymore, well...you might want to get prepared for what's ahead. 

The discomfort of the comfortable is what people of faith can sometimes experience, as it is not always God's will that we stay in this place for long. For those living "in the world" it's a foreign concept. Comfort and leisure is the well-earned reward of hard work and deferred gratification to be relished and enjoyed. But our Lord offers us a warning in the parable of the rich fool, which I have often reflected on in Lk 12:17-21:

“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

What does it mean to be "rich towards God?" For those who are, they give everything they have been given back again, to be used for His purposes. They "do the work even with the wages of work," knowing it will bring forth a hundred fold (including persecutions) not only in the next life, but in this life as well (Mk 10:30). Though contentment is a good disposition and good for mental well being, it is not enough to be content in this life with what we have been given if we are running the race to win. Everything we have belongs to God to be used for His purposes.

I've been praying through this "uncomfortable comfort" for a while now--what does it mean? What is it's purpose? What is the 'next step' for us as a family in doing God's will? Patience is not one of my virtues, and I find that this kind of waiting game (in this case, waiting for marching orders) can be hard. We have been through many seasons as a family--moving, new jobs, the loss of children and parents, caring for the sick and aged--and so God has blessed us, I think, with this season to offer respite. We don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, obviously. But I keep feeling in prayer and circumstance that this season of rest is coming to the end of its term. The Lord is gently calling us to the next chapter, or at least putting it to us in prayer, "I have given you this time. Are you ready now to get back to work?"

I was recently given a particular 1st class relic of St. Maria Goretti. St. Maria is one whose story I know well, but do not have a particular devotion to. One of the churches I frequent for Adoration has a statue of the child St. Agnes and I find when praying I am moved by her saintliness and ask for her intercession. A relic of St. Maria the child virgin-martyr, sometimes known as the "20th century St. Agnes" assumed a place in our home about a week ago, and I find she is already weaving her story, in ways unknown, into our own.

I kind of forgot about the relic until this morning, when I awoke not from a dream, but a recollection of her story. The young Maria came from a poor family in Italy, and her father had died when she was young, forcing her and her siblings to farm and share a home with another family while her mother cared for the younger children. 

Alessandro Serenelli was eighteen years old around this time. His story is tragically familiar to those who are broken and come from brokenness. Shortly after he was born, his own mother attempted to drown him.  Several months later, while in a mental asylum, she herself died.  His brother would also be subsequently interned in an asylum, where he also died. Alessandro’s father, Giovanni, was an alcoholic who struggled to provide for his children.  He moved the family multiple times trying to earn a living as a manual laborer.  Unfortunately, his alcoholism prevented his holding down a job for very long.  It was while endeavoring as a sharecropper that he met Luigi Goretti, father of Maria Goretti.  Both families living in poverty, it was decided that they would partner together and attempt to work as a team for those hiring sharecroppers. 

When Alessandro one day found himself alone with the young Maria, he forced himself upon her in sexual advance. Maria resisted, and also warned him that such a sin was worthy of damnation. In his anger at her resistance, he stabbed her fourteen times. She died within twenty four hours. 

Alessandro was convicted and was sentenced to thirty years in prison. He had no contrition, and deflected blame to Maria who was, of course, innocent. Six years into his sentence, he had a dream in which the young martyr Maria came to him and offered him lilies which burned up in his hand. This act of forgiveness was enough to fill him with contrition, and he awoke a changed man. Upon his release, he sought the forgiveness of Maria's mother, who in the spirit of her saintly daughter, withheld it not, and even figuratively adopted the murderer as her own son. Alessandro died in peace as a lay Capuchin in 1970.

Our family will be beginning a nine day novena to both St. Joseph and St. Maria Goretti this evening, to conclude on July 5th, in which we will be asking for their powerful intercession that we might be led by God to be revealed His holy will, that we may follow it, and for the graces to do so. I have a feeling the story of both St. Joseph and St. Maria Goretti will make sense somewhere down the road. God is the author of life, and can bring men back from the dead as well. For now, in your charity, I would be most appreciative if you may unite with us in this nine day prayer as well. I don't ask for much here at Pater Familias, but I do feel God is preparing us for something, and always respects our free will when we decline his invitation. 

But we don't want to do that. We want to follow Him wherever He leads us, even when we don't know the way or what it entails, and we need grace and fortitude to do so, to say, "Jesus, I trust in you!" The uncomfortable comfortable has been a nice season, admittedly. But from where I sit, I don't think we're meant to stay in it. We are called to work, and there's work to be done.