WHAT a beautiful story, one that needs to be shared just to remind us there is good in this world, good in the church regardless of what is posted on social media and the headlines. From National Catholic Reporter....
That kind soul in the back pew reminds us angels dwell among us
"Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
Dozens of big-name African American entertainers sang for joy when I started my car. It was the "Hallelujah" chorus from "Handel's Messiah: A Soulful Celebration," a 1992 performance of the "Messiah" as channeled through the full range of Black music — gospel, soul, blues, R&B, spirituals, ragtime, big band, jazz fusion and hip-hop. It was a joyful noise.
I had just learned that the angel had died. That jubilant music, that rollicking, swinging rapture, that dizzying elation was an apt celebration of her memory. And her holiness.
The angel was a member of our parish. She would sit in the back pew with her ailing husband and their 40-year-old son Andy, who has developmental disabilities. Her name was Diana, but I didn’t know that until I heard the news of her death.
What I did know was how lovingly she cared for her husband and son. And I saw a lot of them because I like to sit in a back pew, too.
Her husband seemed to have a great number of ailments, a man who was once strong but who now had to make his difficult and painful way up the center aisle to Communion. She was with him every step of the way. And with Andy, too.
They often would be the last people to receive the Eucharist, and, just at the opening of the left aisle that they used to return to their pew, the three of them would stop and, with their arms on each other's shoulders, bow their heads together in a communion of family, a communion of love. Or, if there were people behind them, they would wait until they got to the back of church to do it.
Diana had snow white hair and the brightest of eyes. She seemed to have an inner glow. And her eyes were focused almost always on her husband and her son.
She really impressed our adult daughter, who offhandedly and with deep respect called her the angel. It wasn't a nickname like Angel. It was a noun, a descriptor: angel. And we all came to use it among ourselves.
One time, downtown, at the ballet, my wife Cathy and I saw her and Andy coming into the lobby during an intermission. We talked a bit. She said she often brought her son to watch the dancing.
It might have been then that she mentioned that he was soon going into a sheltered care facility where he could live on his own in a community for the rest of his life. He'd come back to visit on occasion, and we'd see him at church. I remember once he'd grown a moustache.
Diana never knew that our family thought of her and called her the angel. We never mentioned it to anyone else in the parish. But I suspect that there were many others who looked at her over the years and saw a woman who was glowing with love and with life.
Diana's husband died in August 2020, and she followed him nine months later. She was 82, and I can't help thinking that during all those 82 years she was an angel to many, not just her husband and son.
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