This little light of mine

Its funny that I seem to write about things out of sequence. Here it is Tuesday, and I am about to tell a story about Sunday!

On Sunday afternoon, we had to rush back into town from the cottage to a potluck, for the RCIA. (RCIA is a course for catechumens and converts who will join the church at the Easter vigil next year.) Every year, the RCIA opens with this potluck, where the people who went through the year before prepare the food for those about to get started. The reason we go to this event is that my wife is one of the RCIA instructors.

I'm not much of a socializer at these events. So for a half hour or so after the appetizers got put out, I played with my daughter, who wanted to jump on me from the stage in the church hall.However, when supper came out, we diligently found a table with new candidates, and we had a long discussion about how kids today seem to be developing asthma and allergies at an alarming rate (compared to our day.) Two women mentioned to me that they really enjoyed the 8 PM choir, it was the best they had ever heard, and it had something to do with why they were joining!

When I went upstairs to start setting up the sound system, the leader of our folk group arrived, hauling his softshell guitar case. I immediately told him what the two had said about us, telling him that they had called us a "choir." (He hates that – we are a folk group, dammit, folk group!) At any rate, he was thrilled to hear this – he said he wanted us to be the rockingest folk group there was!

When I was up on the altar, I realized, looking at my wife, that I prayed for strangers, friends, even myself all the time. (Mass had been announced for my sister in law.) But it had become a way that I take her for granted, that I didn't often think now to explicitly pray for her. The realization hit me like an awful shock, and I resolved to change that.

Later, after church, the leader of the RCIA team spoke to my wife. This woman is a lovely person, whose soul is practically visible. Humble, loving, and kind, she is a charismatic – but not the kind that makes a big show of it, hollering for all to see his or her piety. I think she is one of those few who really has the charismatic gifts, for she takes them on humbly, tells few about what she sees or feels, and doesn't have a self-promoting bone in her body. My wife is one of the very few who knows. At any rate, she told my wife that she had seen a pillar of light shining down on her all night.

God loves her! He does – my wife sometimes fears she does not have the deep connection, emotionally, with her faith that she feels she should – that beatific sense that God is with you. She caught it when she went on Cursillo, but when she didn't attend Ultreyas the connection she felt to the Cursillo movement petered out. (she was worried I would feel left out, as my Cursillo was a month later.) A prayer group she was going to start got invaded in the planning stages by a friend she has who likes to take everything over. I know she feels frustrated at every turn.

But she has always been like an angel to me. She defers to everyone, helps everyone, laughs with them, cries with them, consoles them, affirms them – it may have been a surprise to her that light shone down on her from Heaven that night.

But it came as no surprise to me.