We met under the apple tree again today for our Reading Club. The morning had that nice late-summer feeling to it, with the leaves stirring every once in a while and little patches of sunlight moving around on our books.
Father LeRoy had told us he might be a little late, so Sister Mary Claire said we should go ahead without him. Robert carried the chairs out, Mini found her usual place where she could keep an eye on everybody, and I began my chapter summary.
Today’s chapter was about a boy named Jules Lacassagne and his father, Roger.
Jules had been sick for two whole years. At first he could hardly swallow solid food, and later the doctors discovered that his throat had become so terribly narrowed that he could live only on liquids. He grew thin and pale, and even the finest doctors in Toulouse and Bordeaux could not cure him.
But Jules had read about Lourdes.
He became completely certain that the Blessed Virgin could help him. He told his mother, “Send me to Lourdes, and you will see I shall be cured.”
His father did not really believe in miracles, but he loved his son so much that he was willing to try anything. So in February they traveled to Lourdes.
Jules prayed in the chapel and at the Grotto. A priest consecrated him to the Blessed Virgin, and afterward Jules washed himself with the spring water and drank some of it.
Then his father handed him a biscuit.
After two years of being unable to eat solid food, Jules swallowed it.
“Papa! I am swallowing the biscuit. I am able to eat. I was sure of it, for I had faith.”
He ate another, and another.
His father hurried off to send one word by telegram to Jules’s mother:
“Cured.”
And Jules remained well.
When I finished reading, nobody said anything for a little while.
Then Robert said, “The boy seemed to have more faith than everybody else put together.”
Sister Mary Claire smiled. “Sometimes children do.”
That started quite a lively discussion.
Robert wondered why Jules could believe so completely when his father could hardly believe at all. Sister said perhaps Jules had received the grace to trust simply, without needing to understand everything first.
I said I thought the most beautiful part was that Jules had carried the thought of Lourdes quietly in his heart for eight months. Nobody encouraged him very much, but he never forgot.
Sister nodded.
“Faith can grow very quietly,” she said. “Sometimes the deepest things are happening when nobody else notices.”
Just then we heard a car door shut beside the church.
“There’s Father,” Robert said.
Father came around the corner carrying a big cardboard tray and looking rather pleased with himself.
“I hope,” he announced, “that the theological discussion has not advanced beyond the point where refreshments may still be admitted.”
Dairy Queen!
He had brought Oreo Cookie Blizzards for everybody.
Sister laughed and said that perhaps this was the first recorded Reading Club discussion in which St. Vitus’ dance, Lourdes, miracles, the Blessed Virgin, and Oreo cookies had all appeared in the same hour.
Mini received no Oreo Blizzard, of course. Father had remembered her too. Hers was a little dish of plain vanilla ice cream with a vanilla wafer stuck in the top.
Mini ate the wafer first.
Robert said that proved she understood the proper order of things.
When our Blizzards were nearly gone, Father returned to the chapter.
He said that perhaps the greatest miracle in the story was not only what happened to Jules.
“Notice what happened to the father,” he said.
Jules received back his health, but his father received something too. A man who had trusted only what he could see and explain suddenly found himself standing before something he could not explain away.
Sister said that was why the author wrote that the Blessed Virgin had given Jules temporal life, but had helped lead his father toward the life that lasts forever.
I liked that very much.
Maybe sometimes God answers one person’s prayer and, hidden inside the answer, there is another gift meant for somebody else.
The afternoon breeze began rustling the apple leaves above us, and one apple dropped into the grass with a little thump.
Father stood and gave us his blessing.
On the walk home I kept thinking about Jules saying, “I was sure of it, for I had faith.”
I don’t think faith always means being sure that God will give us exactly what we ask for.
Maybe it means being sure that, whatever happens, we can still put ourselves into His hands.
And perhaps that is the kind of faith I would like to have.
Dear Blessed Mother, help me to trust Jesus simply and lovingly, especially when I cannot see what He is doing. Help me remember that no prayer offered with love is ever forgotten.
Amen.
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