From Einstein to St. Gerard, thoughts on devotion

My mom, the late Agnes Frohling Jackson, taught Albert Einstein about gravity, if you can believe that one, but she taught me much more about devotion.

As a young nurse, she said she once told a little fib to sneak into another nurse’s ward and catch a glimpse of the famous patient at the hospital where she was working. She grew up a few doors down from the physics professor in a big house on Stockton Street in Princeton, N.J.

When she reunited with her former neighbor, now patient, Einstein wanted to know how the IV system being used on him worked. She dutifully explained the medicinal drip and its gravitational forces, and then went about the rest of her rounds.

She had a story to tell, which she later gleefully passed on to her nine children.

But she passed on much more to her kids than stories about the man who unlocked the secrets of the atom with his “theory of relativity.”

She had a lifelong devotion to the Blessed Mother, and once considered life in the convent before deciding on a nursing career and eventually motherhood.

Her extraordinary devotion to St. Gerard Majella, the patron saint of expectant mothers whose feast day is Oct. 16, came about after a difficult second pregnancy with my older brother, Joseph.  After having a cesarean birth and nearly dying, she was told it might be unwise to try to have more children.

But she and my father, James Jackson, who had his own Einstein stories as the professor’s paper boy, wanted a big family.

So she prayed to St. Gerard, and along I came 13 months later. I was followed by six other siblings, and other than my eldest sister, Mary Therese, we all were given names with odes to St. Gerard – Joseph Gerard, Gerard Jude, James Gerard, Bernadette Geralyn, Thomas Gerard, Edward George Gerard, John Francis Gerard and Matthew Gerard.

The tradition continued this past spring when my nephew was named John Thomas Gerard Lutz. How my mom, who died at 89 in 2021, would have cherished that name.

She and my father, who raised nine children on a journalist’s salary, delighted in their large family and passing on their Catholic faith.

Neither of them was flashy nor boisterous about it; quietly praying, attending Mass regularly and helping those in need wherever they could. They passed on their deep belief in mostly passive ways, but were quick to admonish their children if we did anything that was contrary to the way a Christian should behave.

They made sure we all had solid Catholic educations and enriched our faith by example, not preaching.

Their simple devotions to the Blessed Mother and St. Gerard were a couple of the examples that still live with all of us.

Prayer to St. Gerard: O Great Saint Gerard, beloved servant of Jesus Christ, perfect imitator of your meek and humble Savior, and devoted Child of the Mother of God: enkindle within my heart one spark of that heavenly fire of charity which glowed in your heart and made you an angel of love. O glorious Saint Gerard, because when falsely accused of crime, you did bear, like your Divine master, without murmur or complaint, the calumnies of wicked men, you have been raised up by God as the Patron and Protector of expectant mothers. Preserve me from danger and from the excessive pains accompanying childbirth, and shield the child which I now carry, that it may see the light of day and receive the lustral waters of baptism through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Email Gerry Jackson at gjackson@CatholicReview.org

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