"I remember the days that are past..."

When Liz and I recited Psalm 143 each Tuesday at "port time" (it is one of the psalms for Tuesday Night Prayer) I would often repeat the antiphon that accompanied the psalm, addressing it to her, with a touch of humor and tongue in cheek of course, but sincerely as well: "Do not hide your face from me; in you I put my trust."

These days, when I say the 5th verse of Psalm 143, it is difficult not to think of Liz as well as the God who brought us out of Egypt:

I remember the days that are past:
I ponder all your works.
I muse on what your hand has wrought
and to you I stretch out my hands. (Psalm 143)

Which, for some reason, brings me to this. I realized yesterday at Liz's graveside that when I meet people in the future who never knew Liz, I will feel something of the same thing I feel when I meet Catholics who are too young to have experienced the solemnity and almost preternatural spirituality of the pre-Vatican II Church. In both cases, there is something that simply cannot be conveyed in descriptive terms, something precious, ineffable, profoundly at odds with the spirit of the age.

The sanctuary of the church were I received my first communion in 1951.

Those of us who, through no merit of our own, were privileged to have been exposed to people like Liz and to mystery-soaked and Christ-haunted sanctuaries so typical of the pre-Vatican II Church must not take the graces we received from them to our graves with us. Impossible though these blessings are to transmit in an age "distracted from distraction by distraction," we must keep trying to find ways, as Paul did, to pass on to others what was passed on to us.

Liz, so completely at home in
the stillness and solemnity of the church sanctuary.

I remember the days that are past:
I ponder all your works.
I muse on what your hand has wrought
and to you I stretch out my hands. (Psalm 143)