Additional Columns by Sherry Antonetti: Becoming a Great Story Learning to be Unafraid to Ask The Gift of Courage Coming Home to the Wide Open Door of the Father Loaves and Fishes To Do List for the Day, Every Day Delighting in the Unexpected Immediate Intimacy of Answered Prayers Celebrating the Song of Songs on Saint Valentine's Day Forty Lenten Resolutions

"Cheer Cheer for Old Notre Dame!" by Sherry Antonetti

When I was in high school, I never made the pep squad, or even the drill team. I tried out every year. By college, I had wised up enough to recognize flip flops and high tosses in flirty short skirts with pom-poms were not in the cards and settled for screaming rabidly for the Irish.

Still, every heart’s desire gets answered in God’s time.

On the trip back home from the papal mass in Washington DC, we were accosted by an evangelist bent on telling everyone who went to see the Pope that they were going to Hell. He held a sign six feet tall claiming prayer to Mary was tantamount to blasphemy. My children were bewildered by this aggressive attack on the Blessed Mother and I had to admit, I was at a loss to explain why anyone would feel angry at Jesus’ mother. After considering many responses, some thoughtful, some more…assertive, we settled on saying a public Hail Mary for him.

On the train, we met a man whose daughter would be attending the University of Notre Dame, and a woman who had graduated the same year my husband had, and had come all this way with her five children from Terra Haute, Indiana to be present at the mass. I was awed by her faith and her pilgrimage. I felt worn out having just taken the subway in from the suburbs. I stood impressed by her devotion and felt a whole new love for the University of Notre Dame, born out of this woman’s witness, and this man’s daughter’s adventure to come that fall.

We came to a metro stop and the crowd thinned out, allowing all remaining passengers to sit. The woman next to me pulled out seven rosaries, indicating she would be giving one to each of her children and to some of her grand children, with one especially for her son that no longer prayed.

We talked for a bit and I suggested a technique for the less enthusiastic son to use in prayer my brother had learned in the Jesuit Volunteer Core. “Make a petition before each Hail Mary. The beauty of this process,” I explained, “was how the mysteries shaped one’s petitions. Like the luminous for today, Thursday…”

“Luminous? What’s the Luminous?” the woman looked startled. “I’ve been saying the rosary for years and have never heard of the Luminous mysteries.”

Regretting that I had left my rosary that shows each of the mysteries for each day of the week at home, I began explaining that Pope John Paul II had introduced the Luminous mysteries which were to be said on Thursday and reflected Christ’s mission; “The Baptism In the River Jordan, The Wedding Feast at Cana, The Transfiguration of Jesus, the Proclamation of the Kingdom of God and the Institution of the Eucharist.” I admit, I needed help from my 9th and 6th grader to get them all in order properly. I explained they were part of the vision from Fatima.

The woman was delighted. She had even been to Fatima but never heard of these wonderful new additions to the Rosary. She thanked us as she left the train and I sat there reflecting on how in the span of 30 minutes of the Pope’s visit and mass, I’d become a Notre Dame Cheerleader.

Sherry Antonetti is a mother of eight children and a freelance writer of humor and family life columns with prior publications in Absolutewrite, the Catholic Standard, Beaumont Enterprise and the Washington Post. She can be reached at Smwbmpfjm@netzero.com. You can read additional pieces from her blog, http://sherryantonettiwrites.blogspot.com.