For All The Saints

It’s The Feast of All Saints so I went to Mass.
Holy Days of Obligation bring out a whole different bunch of strange Catholics.
Way more old, deaf and breathless men than usual.

The priest, during his solo bit, mentioned purgatory.
He had my attention.
I thought it was gone, like Limbo.
Nope, purgatory is still there.
He described it as kind of waiting room where we prepare to be received in to heaven.
A spiritual quarantine, just until any residual sin has gone.
Maybe it was the smoke and espresso I’d replaced breakfast with, but it made me think of Brits abroad.
Turn up all pissed and rowdy, wearing the wrong clothes. Taking a few days to get used to the food and plumbing.
If at all!
I now have this idea of purgatory as the ‘Costa del Sol’ of the life eternal.
He also said that the Saints are praying for us, but I find that, like Broad Beans, a little hard to swallow.
The smoke didn’t help with the Gospel either.
It was ‘the Blessed are the Cheese Makers’ one, so I was ‘looking on the bright side of life’ until the next hymn.

I decided to focus on the ‘living saint’ in the west of Ireland.
How, daily, she cares for and loves a man who doesn’t recognise her anymore.
Her quiet determination to do all she can to keep him at home.
Her endless patience with his repetitiveness, wanderings and occasional inappropriate behaviour.
How she can still see the intelligent ‘man’ in the child she now cares for.
How she will sit and rub cream into his skin and feed him his tablets in what ever weird and wonderful way he decides.
How she can do all this while witnessing the gradual loss of the love of her life.
A life on mental ‘rewind’, speeding backwards to an inevitable end.
Hers on ‘pause’.
My most fervent prayer was that she will know when to ask for help.

In Your mercy….