Additional Columns by Sherry Antonetti: Feeling like a World of Sparrows Haiku Prayers The Year of Paul the Apostle The Gifts of Sons Teen Tips for Surviving to Adulthood, Spritually Intact The Luminous Mystery of Marriage, A Primer for All of Us Prayer Spam My Son Peter Meets the Pope Being Spiritually Awake for the Feast Why We Don't Always Get What We Want...And Shouldn't "Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame!" Becoming a Great Story Learning to be Unafraid to Ask The Gift of Courage Coming Home to the Wide Open Door of the Father 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

If Today You Hear His Voice
by Sherry Antonetti

Back in ’92 when I first discovered I was pregnant, I was afraid. This was a new adventure and I didn’t feel ready. I went to mass at the local church, St. Michael’s. It wasn’t our parish, we didn’t have one at the time, we just floated from Catholic church to Catholic church, looking as young people do sometimes, for the right fit. Living in Houston at the time and lacking a car, I had to bike in the heat to get there in time for noon mass, but the Holy Spirit and not a little bit of desperation on my part drove me to make it on time.

To this day, even including my own very large brood, I have never attended a noon mass so overflowing with children. Almost every mother that came up for communion, was pregnant, or had toddlers in tow, or was pushing a stroller. The line of women was a physical and non verbal message from Christ assuring me “It will be okay.” The songs being sung were even, “Here I am,” and “Be Not Afraid.”

By the time I received the Eucharist, it was hard not to tear up at the level of effort God had put forth to get these unknown mothers with their small ones out the door and to the Church so that this mother to be, would feel no longer afraid. To this day, I refer to it as the “dripping babies” mass.

The little thought in my head, “I’ll go to mass…” as a means of coping with fear, was the gift of the Holy Spirit, telling me to get moving. This is what the Holy Spirit does. Our very soul is made for movement, for love, and thus kicks from the instant there are limbs to move. Death of the spirit, death of the body, and death of the mind are all manifested in stillness. Sin requires we remain stationary, that we reduce our light and our reach and our capacity to love. Grace demands we move. Grace demands we grow. Grace demands we love more, impossibly more.

So if today you feel the prickle to call someone, to visit a person, to pray or to serve, do not allow the excuses of I’m busy, I’m tired, I’ve done my part to reduce you to stillness. If today you hear His voice, harden not your heart. Pray for the near occasion of grace, then be ready to move.

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.