"Non Moriar, Sed Vivam"

Recently Benedict Ambrose and I received another beautiful card from Emma, who sews habits for the Dominicans. Thank you very much, Emma! We are very touched that you arranged to have MORE Masses said for us.

We really will never be able to sort out whose intercession was the one that brought about B.A.'s "pretty miraculous" recovery! Maybe they all did.

Although there have certainly been ugly moments in the past year--the ugliest stemming from moral weakness or mistakes--there have been many, many, many beautiful ones, too. Some have been provided by readers! Some have been provided by family and friends around us. One was hearing the voice of the local Caregivers' Association representative on the phone.* The most beautiful were provided by Benedict Ambrose himself, when he was simply out of his mind.  One of my favourites was when, one or two nights before the final operation, he stopped fighting against me and food and decided he liked custard.

But he was in his right mind yesterday when he was in the back of church, in his old place in the choir pews, singing the Offertory:

"Dexteram Domine fecit virtutem, dextera Domine exaltavit me:
non moriar, sed vivam, et narrabo opera domine."

(The right hand of the Lord has wrought strength, the right hand of the Lord has exalted me: I shall not die, but live and tell of works of the Lord.")

Me, I burst into tears.

I knew a priest once who preached about wanting to paint smiles on all the statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although I liked him a lot and usually found his homilies like manna in the desert, I did not like that. There was a metal sculpture in the centre of that town dedicated to dead and injured workers: it showed a strong, muscular man whose head had been crushed. It was a stark reminder of men throughout the history of the town who had been badly hurt or killed in any kind of dangerous job, and by extension their bereaved parents, wives and children. A smiling Madonna is lovely at Christmas, but when you are going through agony and disaster, the Sorrowful Virgin is the  woman you KNOW really understands.

In the same way, I think, the Traditional Latin Mass really expresses the seriousness of human worship for a God who is both good and terrifying, who permits an inexplicable (and rare) brain tumour to grow and yet who guides a dangerous operation to its optimal end.

And I throw in that plug because a reader  in Toronto wrote in to say that she had gone to a Traditional Latin Mass because I write about it and now goes regularly, because she loves it so much.

In other news: Although I have been making my painful way through the Urdu alphabet, I'm putting further Urdu studies on hold until July. It seems that I am being called to review German for the next few months.

Postscript: B.A.'s being sick, with all the blood, vomit, bumps and scars that it entailed, was not ugly compared to moments when other people's rashness, laziness, impatience, or incompetence--including and especially my own--came into focus. A tumour is sad and scary, but not evil, just as a hurricane is sad and scary, but not (in itself) evil. It is the human response to the illness the tumour causes (or to the hurricane) that is good or evil. I heard that in theology school, and I now I have done the field work, so to speak. It's true.

*What to say to the spouse of a very sick person after asking how the sick person is: "And how are you?" This, I think, is especially true in the UK where medical personnel can sometimes (not always) make you feel less useful or valuable than a seeing-eye dog.