“To You Today”

Almost every morning before I leave for work, Mrs. Orr will say something along the lines of “I hope someone is really kind to you today.” It’s one of those things that I know she sincerely means, and I take it in that vein, but I rarely think about it once my day begins. This is probably because on most days, no one is “really kind” to me.

This morning on the way to work, I prayed the Rosary and then did some thinking about my life, about the spectacular mess that I’ve made of it in so many way, of the numberless crevasses of regret that I see when I look behind me, the squandered time, the blindness to the opportunities to do good, the mean-hearted words I’ve spoken and thought, the arrogance and self-importance, the uncontrolled temper and occasional violence in which I’ve indulged. And in honesty, my mind has difficulty comprehending how Christ could give me a pass on so much, even if He did die for my sins. Perhaps this is why the Church’s teaching on Purgatory has arrested so much of my attention lately. When I was a boy, my mother said to me several times, “Just because you say you’re sorry doesn’t mean the damage you did just up and disappears. I might forgive you, but you still have to live with the consequences of what you did. And sometimes those consequences haunt you for all of your life.”

And so when I arrived at work, my mind was already sailing up this particular channel, with self-loathing to the east and thoughts of centuries or eons in Purgatory to the west. A few typical encounters with less-than-cheerful coworkers, and I withdrew into myself, asking Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Joan of Arc to pray for me and to help me find my way out of the clouds gathering around me. At one point in the middle of the morning, I was standing by the copy machine, waiting for the thing to spit out some papers, and the sense of gloom just covered me. I reached into my pocket and felt my rosary there, and I stared out the window into the gorgeous and sunlit  Wednesday, and I wished for the zillionth time that I could travel back and talk to my young self and set him straight on a few things. I said another prayer and then returned to my desk.

Just a few minutes later, a client passed my desk enroute to the exit. She looked at me, then stepped over to where I was sitting.

“I just want to say something to you, if I can.” She was looking very fixedly at me. I told her that of course she could say anything to me she wished.

She motioned for me to join her in the adjacent hallway, so I stood up and followed her. When we were away from the bustle of the office, she looked up at me.

“I just want you to know that you are a blessing to me. I’ve been coming to this office for a long time, and you were the first person I ever dealt with on my first visit. You were so kind and so patient with me, and you always have been. You’ve always said something nice to me and never sounded phony, and you always seem to know whether to joke or whether to be serious. I feel like you’re really special, and I don’t think this place has any idea how blessed they are to have you working here. I just wanted you to know that.”

When I opened my mouth to reply, my voice caught in my throat, and I was taken aback by the strong emotion I felt. I expressed my deep gratitude for her words, and I said, “You might not believe this, but you are an answer to prayer. I was having a pretty dismal morning, and I had actually prayed just minutes before you stopped at my desk, prayed that things might look brighter. And you brightened my day, and my life, by saying what you said to me.”

We talked for several more minutes, and then the lady left. I went back to my desk and completed some things I’d been working on, but my mind was replaying the conversation. And then I caught myself thinking, “What a pleasant coincidence.”

The thought jarred me, because I firmly do NOT believe in coincidence. And I realized that I had fallen prey to a very ugly mindset. People ask for miracles all the time, but when something truly miraculous — on a personal, intimate scale — happens to them, they are very quick to dismiss it as coincidence or luck or “it just happened.”

For myself, I do not want to explain away such things in my life. I want to believe, and I find it easier to believe all the time, that God and angels and saints intervene on my behalf constantly. I whispered a brief prayer of repentance for this lapse, and determined fully in my heart not to allow myself to explain away such a moment. Not ever again.

I see this incident as a grace that was given to me, and I am deeply grateful for it. There have been moments in my life when I have felt the presence of God with me so powerfully that it unnerved me. Today was one of those times. And I realized that when my wife says to me, “I hope someone is really kind to you today,” she’s not just hoping something. She’s offering a prayer on my behalf.

Today the veil between my everyday life and the world of heavenly beings seemed particularly flimsy. God grant that I might live in a constant awareness of this fact, of this reality.

~ S.K. Orr