This side of heaven

I can’t remember when we first heard her name. Every Sunday at Mass, the lector reads the names of those in the parish who are sick. And, while other names moved in and out of the intentions, Genevieve’s remained.

There’s something beautiful about that part of the Mass where we join our voices and prayers for the members of our community who need God’s healing. Every Sunday, my younger son and I would exchange a look or a nudge when Genevieve’s name was read.

We didn’t know her at all. But we prayed for her every week, our voices joining the congregation with a robust, “Lord, hear our prayer.”

Sometimes I wondered why she was on the list. Was she on a cancer journey? Recovering from a stroke? Had she suffered a bad accident? Was she an infant or an older person? What was her prognosis? It didn’t matter for our prayers, of course. God knew, and he held her in his hands.

Then one Sunday, when the lector listed the sick who needed our prayers, he omitted her name. Instead, he read her name aloud to ask for prayers for her soul. My eyes met my son’s. Genevieve had passed on. After all those weeks and months of prayer for a woman we didn’t know, we learned that she was on her way to heaven.

I felt sad and yet also at peace.

We talked about Genevieve on the way home, wondering who she was. I looked up her obituary, and we learned she was 98, a widow, mother of two and grandmother of two. Maybe we had been at Mass with her before she was listed in the intentions. Maybe she had smiled at our son when he was wriggling in the pews as a toddler. Maybe we held the door for her now and then. Maybe our paths never crossed until we heard her name read aloud at Mass. We’ll never know. But we do know that we prayed for her during her time on earth, and we are now helping to pray her home.

During the month of November, we remember those we love who have gone before us. We thank God for giving us friends and family members who have been such important parts of our lives – and we pray for their souls.

In our household, we fill a basket with names of souls and pull one to pray for on each day of the month. Some of the names are people I know well, loved ones who call many memories to mind. Some of the names are people my husband knows well. Some are people our children have known and loved. And some are people we don’t know well or maybe not at all – people we’ve prayed for at the request of friends. With each name in the basket, we’ll share what we know or remember about that person.

This year, Genevieve’s name will be in our prayer basket. We don’t know her family. We don’t know her story. But we are connected to her through prayer, through our parish, and through our connection with everyone as members of the Body of Christ.

“The holy souls in purgatory are our friends,” St. Gertrude the Great said. “If everyone adopted one holy soul to pray for, purgatory would be emptied in no time.”

May this season of All Souls offer you a chance to reconnect with those you’ve loved and maybe make a new connection with someone you won’t meet on this side of heaven.

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