Visible Devotion, Unshakeable Faith

Connie Anderson recalls the many examples of faith and works of mercy she observed among the women in her family.

Since ancient Biblical times, women have known the importance of being close to life, how to care for the sick, how to train, and how to share their faith: first, in their own homes. Concrete action spoke louder than words. Together with their husbands, they built enduring families and cohesive communities. Resilient faith and steadfast love were crucial to the couple mutually weathering life’s storms. In deeply Catholic South Louisiana, "Vive la difference (long live the difference)" was an expression familiar to us all.

I was blessed with a family where women accepted their role as primary caregivers and teachers of the faith. Following my mother’s birth at home in 1924, my grandmother, who had a radical hysterectomy, almost bled to death. She developed severe osteoporosis and became prone to frequent bone fractures. When she was still a young girl, my mother nursed her mom whenever she was confined to bed.

null

Like so many others during the Great Depression, financial difficulties plagued their family. At times, my grandmother’s condition was severe enough to need expensive hospital care. Health insurance was not yet available. My grandparents turned to daily prayer, particularly the Rosary, which they had learned from their families.

Traditional novenas to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and St. Jude held them together. In a seemingly miraculous way, they bounced back.

Out of love fostered by his Cajun mother and gratitude for prayers answered, my grandfather, would decorate Our Lady’s altar at our parish church with bucket-loads of homegrown snapdragons and gladiolas. My grandmother, whose mother died when she was thirteen, grew in her devotion to Our Lady when she boarded with the Dames of the Sacred Heart in Grand Cocteau, Louisiana. She usually had a rosary tucked under her pillow. The outward signs of their interior faith influenced my mother.

When I was in first grade, Mother used her excellent skills as a seamstress to make a beautiful seed pearl crown and a lace-trimmed satin pillow for our school’s annual May Crowning. She also made a miniature set for my class to crown a desk-top statue of Mary. Years later as an eighth grader, I crowned Our Lady for our school, proudly using Mother’s full-sized handiwork.

My family’s love of God, so visibly expressed, had added meaning because of their equally strong Love of Neighbor. During the 1930s when Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) was still considered highly contagious, my grandfather volunteered so often at the U.S. Hospital in Carville, LA, that he became known affectionately as “The Patient’s Pal.” My grandmother regularly offered food to “hobos” who wandered Baton Rouge during the Depression. Every summer, Mother gave clothing my brother and I had outgrown to families she knew were in need, a practice undoubtedly learned from her parents.

null

Most memorably, my mother and her family’s actions were filled with the spirit of courage. In the 1940s, it was still not legal in Louisiana for patients with leprosy to marry. Their newborn children were immediately adopted out of fear of contagion. My very devout grandparents helped two patients who did not want to live together without being married to escape through a hole in the hospital fence, and, with fake blood tests, wed. When the couple returned to the hospital, the administration, which included Daughters of Charity, allowed them to live together as man and wife. However, it took many years for them to reunite with the children, who were later born.

During the 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott, Mother and many of her friends were free “taxis” for African-Americans who needed rides to their jobs. They were not radical civil-rights demonstrators. They were loyal Catholics who responded to New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel’s pastoral letter, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers.” Issued to the clergy, religious, and laity during Lent in March 1953, Rummel’s letter vigorously denounced racism’s cruelty and called for the desegregation of Catholic schools throughout the Archdiocese, which at the time still included Baton Rouge.

My mother, my grandparents, and their friends were very ordinary, down-to-earth laypeople. Yet for me, they were living witnesses of St. John XXIII and Vatican ll’s call to the laity. Although their examples were very human, and at times painfully flawed, their visible mercy and unshakeable faith marked me for life.

In a complicated world, returning to the simplicity of family prayer and small acts of kindness can lead to much-needed works of mercy and make a lasting impact. If families pray together, they tend to stay together. And if they stay together, no matter what they look like, God can work miracles.

null