Some months after my mother died my father showed me her little Catholic prayer book. It was much used and taped together with sellotape. My father told me she had used it many , many years. My mother's faith was very simple and rock like, seeing through the many years of joy and sadness and much tragedy. Before she died of cancer I asked her if, through all this she ever doubted that God existed?/ She looked startled and shocked, 'If there was no God, sure what would be the point of anything?' she said. My mind goes back to my grandmother. It was a very cold day and I was about four or five years old clutching her hand as we trudged along to Saint Peter's cathedral. She wore a blanket over her head as a shawl and in her hands she clutched a rosary, her lips moving in prayer as she walked. The rosary was always so close to her hands it seemed a part of her. Her faith so strong and natural it was like part of the air that she braved. After my mother died I posted her rosary over to my brother in America. Last week a saw a photograph of my neice, dressed in white, holding the rosary, my mother's rosary as she mede her first communion. But her faith will not be like my mothers or my grandmothers. Karl Rahner one time said that in our generation folks will have to be mystics or we will not be Catholics at all. I have found it in my own life. Our faith mst not be rock life but like roaring rivers, swiftly moving and deep, steeped in prayer. We need this depth of Spirit for these so strange, changing times, but more much more for the times to come. The challenges ahead. I was reading in Spirit Daily today about the Dow Jones falling so steeply. Another little gust of wind fortelling the great storms to come... http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... _article=1
