Katherine got the worst fright of her life and the deepest sense of peace on the same night.
She was on a small ship crossing from mainland Italy to Sardinia, where her family lived. The sea was stormy, and the night was dark.
Another young woman who shared her cabin, got scared, and ran out of the cabin to be with friends elsewhere.
Katherine had been vomiting, and felt too weak to move.
In the middle of the night, the ship stopped—in the middle of the sea. She did not know what was happening. She remembered, to her horror, that another ship had sunk around the same spot just a week earlier.
Katherine did the only thing she could do—she started praying.
She recited the Rosary.
Then, to her surprise, an unexpected sense of calm settled on her. With each “Hail, Mary” and “Holy Mary,” she found herself becoming less and less scared, more and more confident.
She would tell me later: “I had said the Rosary so many times in my life, often without thinking of the words. That night, I realized what I was saying: I was asking for Mary’s protection at the present moment (“now”) and at the hour of death—the only two moments we are sure of. If God protects me during these two moments, that is enough for me—right now and when I am dying. I was not scared any longer.”
For Thankam, my third sister, God became more real after the worst tragedy of her life. Her husband Joseph, a man of remarkable integrity and goodness, and apparently in perfect health, died suddenly. I will not understand the anguish my sister must have gone through at this unexpected and heart-breaking loss. He was 52; she was in her forties. Their five children were all in school.
“I could not eat or sleep,” she told us. She was getting weaker and weaker, and felt overburdened by Joseph’s death and the heavy responsibility that now lay on her shoulders. She would lie awake at night, unable to bear the sorrow and unclear about how to manage her family alone.
Then, one day, she did something that changed her. This is what she did.
“I told the Lord: ‘I am tired of rowing this boat all alone. Now, you take over the boat; I am going to sleep.’ I told Him that, and lay down, and slept.”
That was the first good sleep she had after Joseph’s death.
The pain remained, of course; raising five children all alone is no cakewalk for a widow. But she was able to sleep.
The Lord was now rowing her boat.
Later, she would tell us often: “If things are going well, it is not because of our smartness, but by God’s tender mercy.”
When things go well, don’t we often (foolishly) attribute it to our smartness, and forget the loving arms that hold us tenderly and provide for us?
What we need to pray for is not to be sheltered from storms, but to have the strength to face them.
How we find rest is not by withdrawing from the struggle, but by inviting the Lord to take charge more fully. He often waits nearby, too delicate to get too involved, because we may have preferred to keep him out. Tragedy—or what appears to be that—may be a hidden invitation to us to open our eyes and see how fully we are cared for, how tenderly held, and never, never forsaken.
As a friend—a woman religious whom I know for years—told me when she was diagnosed with cancer, “God has always been so good to me. I cannot doubt his care now.”
May we see beyond the turbulence and the smallness of our boat—and grasp the strong arms guiding us, and rowing for us. They will lead us to where we are meant to go.
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