A three month old baby was aware of rejection and love

By Fr Noel O’Connor SCA – Nairobi, Kenya

‘Seek God and you will find God’ – St Vincent Pallotti

In this short article I will use two stories to show how some of St Vincent Pallotti’s prayers helped me to find the connection and meaning between my faith and my daily life experiences.

One day a few months before my mother went to God, as we were celebrating the mystery of the Eucharist at our kitchen table, she asked me the following question, “Why did Petie have to suffer so much before he died? I have asked myself that question for over 50 years”. Petie, her son and my elder brother, was kicked by my uncle’s horse at the age of six and died a week later in hospital in Cashel, County Tipperary, Ireland.

After his death my mother asked the chaplain, “Why had Petie to suffer so much before he died?” He told her, “It was the will of God that he suffered because of his sins”. Like all people of faith she believed that God is good, God is able, and evil exists in the world. She was a theologian from the school of life who searched for the meaning and connection between her faith and life’s daily joys and sorrows of caring for her eighteen children. I now ask myself, “If that priest had read the words of St. Vincent Pallotti’s on compassion, what would his answer to my grieving mother have been?

I would like to become food to feed the hungry, clothing to cover the naked, drink to quench the thirsty, a soothing potion for the stomachs of the weak, a soft bed for the repose of the tired limbs of the weak, medicine and health for the sick, light for the blind, a life to raise the dead, so that if they could return to live on this earth they might do great things, which they would certainly do for the glory of my God, of my Father, of my Creator, of my Good, of my all.

(St Vincent based this reflection on 1 John 4:20, ‘Since no one who fails to love the brother/sister whom he can see can love God whom he has not seen’ and Matthew 25: 40, ‘In so far as you did this to the least of these brothers/sisters of mine, you did it to me’)

From this prayer on compassion we see St. Vincent loved the poor and the sick. History tells us that he was always looking for ways in which he could be connected to the poor and sick in Rome. His deep respect, love and connection with the suffering came from his belief that all people are created “in the image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26). St Vincent wrote, “I see you in God, I deal with you in God. I embrace you, I greet you and I love you in God. In God I always find myself united with you in all that you do”.

As a member of the Pallottine Fathers, I daily pray St. Vincent’s prayer, ‘Breathe God in and out. Find God in everything. Reveal God to all. Radiate the presence of God’. This prayer moves me to search for the meaning and connection between my belief in God and my daily joys and sorrows. To illustrate this I would like to give another story from my care of the sick at Ward 4 (burns ward) in one of the local hospitals in Nairobi, Kenya.

Every week I used to make a short visit to John, a baby boy whose face was badly burned at home in one of the Nairobi slums. He was only 5 days old when a burning plastic bag overhead dripped on to his face, causing horrific facial burns. I found it very painful and upsetting to look at him. Why did I continue to visit him? My transformation, meaning and connection happened on 5 January this year, when I heard that his mother had abandoned him. On hearing of his abandonment I lifted, embraced and kissed him. Miraculously, his scars were no longer scary and smelly. I was able to see beyond his appearances. Was I not caressing myself and my brother? This change moved me to initiate many meetings with hospital staff and friends. Now, Josie, a single mother is back nursing her son John with the support of a group of women from the adjacent parish. The first stage of skin grafting has been very successful. One thing that amazed me was how a three-month baby is aware of love and rejection. For when Josie, his mother, returned he rejected her for a full week by crying and refusing to let her breastfeed him.

John reminded me of, and connected me to, my own childhood. I was told that when I was born before Christmas 1952, my mother got very ill and had to be hospitalised for a long time in Cashel. Dolly Hume, my God-Mother, reared me for the duration of my mother’s long sickness. Dolly said, “You were great at crying!” Why so? Like my mother I am still asking where God was in my cradle experience? I am encouraged by the following words of St. Vincent, “Seek God and you will find him. Seek him in all things and you will find him in all things. Seek him always and you will find him always”. I am grateful that my own pain enables me to find meaning and to connect with my own brothers/sisters in their own sorrows. Where is God in your life’s joys and sorrows?