Pilgrims’ Prayers
Posted by Danielle Bean in Faith on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 1:10 PM
We spent the day yesterday at Goose Rocks Beach in Maine. I’ve got the sunburned neck, sand-filled van, and exhausted children to prove it. It was a tiring day, but as always, making the effort to get our gang to the ocean proved worthwhile.
On the way home, Dan and I decided to drive through Kennebunk in order to take the kids to the St. Anthony Franciscan Monastery that we used to visit back when we were dating.
The monastery has a guest house, but that didn’t interest us much. What did interest us were the dozens of walkways that wind their way through the lush, green woods, past statues of saints, outdoor grottos, and stations of the cross, toward the ocean.
Along the way we “met” St. Francis, St. Anthony, Our Lady of Fatima, Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha, and more. A particularly lovely spot was the Shrine of the Way of the Cross. Here, Daniel was quite taken with the stone steps. He’s a pious child, to be sure, but I don’t think the fact that they were engraved with the last words of Christ was the appeal here.
What thrilled him was the relative ease with which he could scale them. Fast. Over and over again, he raced up and down, very nearly giving me a heart attack. One misstep and I was sure we’d be heading to the Kennebunk ER, and I didn’t need our day trip to Maine to be that memorable.
Between baby grabs, I managed to take a good look at the altar. It was striking because it was absolutely covered with shells, sticks, medals, rosaries, stones, and handwritten notes that praying pilgrims had left behind.
One stone in particular caught my eye. Smooth and small, it rested in the farthest corner of the altar. On its surface, in felt tip marker, someone had inscribed a single word that gripped my heart: Baby.
I wondered who might have left this single word prayer. Someone who was hoping for a pregnancy or someone who was worried about a troubled pregnancy? Someone who lost her baby and was now hoping for healing and peace? Someone whose baby was grown and was in danger of going astray?
What struck me most about the entire scene was that these tiny tokens which covered the altar represented the hopes and wishes, dreams and pains of hundreds of passing strangers. We don’t know each other, but we share a common faith and a common hope that our petitions will be heard.
I don’t need to know what “Baby” means on this particular stone. God knows. The one who wrote it knows. And here we entrust it—along with all the other pieces of prayer—to Mary. Mary, who sees and feels our pain as only a mother can, collects them all, and looks down on us all. Lovingly.
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