This past Friday, I went to AquaFit wearing a pair of gold earrings my mom had given me. Purchased fifty years ago from a jeweller in Ottawa, the earrings are small gold balls cut in a lace-like pattern. They had been a favourite of my mom’s until she finally admitted she never wore them and gave them to me.
Now, they sat in my earlobes as I entered the packed YMCA pool, paddled my way to the deep end, and spent forty-five minutes trying to execute jumping jacks, a motion similar to cross-country skiing, high knee raises, and showgirl kicks without sinking like a stone to the pool bottom.
After class, I waited with a throng of ladies for a shower, rinsed off quickly when one came free, towelled off, and made the brisk ten-minute walk home for a proper shower before starting work. It was after the second shower and while rubbing my head with a towel that I looked in the mirror and discovered one of the earrings was gone.
I searched my bathroom. Nothing. I retraced my steps through the house. Nothing. I retraced my steps back to the YMCA, stooping to search the grass. Nothing. I talked to a lady at the YMCA services desk. She asked the morning crew to search the change room and showers. Nothing.
“We can wait for the pool filter basket to fill later today and take another look,” the lady said to me. Moved by my look of dismay, she added, “Pray to Saint Anthony.”
I am a new soon-to-be Roman Catholic. So new that after being recommended to my church’s Adoration Chapel to sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament and receive Jesus’ answers to the questions that plagued me, I sat there for half an hour thinking the Chapel was dark and cold, wondering where the Blessed Sacrament was exactly, and hearing nothing but my mild tinnitus. I tried again the following week spending another half hour in the dark, cold room and coming up empty. Still, I was determined.
On my third visit, I was kneeling in prayer but thinking that I was just not getting the whole Adoration Chapel thing when another parishioner came in. She glanced at me before walking to a wooden box at the front. Grabbing handles in the center of the box, she opened two doors. Behold, the Blessed Sacrament! Perched in a monstrance and set aglow with brilliant yellow light that filled the room. Now I understood! Now I could feel Jesus’ presence! And maybe hear his exasperated gasp, “Finally! I have been trying to tell her, but the doors were closed!”
All of that to say I did not know to which Saint Anthony I should be praying for the safe return of my earring, and so I turned to Google. Saint Anthony of Padua, dedicated to preaching, died in 1231 and canonized only eleven months later. “He is invoked in finding all lost things and by women seeking husbands,” says my illustrated Book of Saints. Sounded legit so I Googled a prayer.
Now one thing I have learned on my journey back to Christ is that praying is not making wishes. God is no genie. He may in His wisdom decide that what you are asking for is not good for His plan or His plan for you. Battling the “wish” that my earring be found, I humbly added, “And, Saint Anthony, if God does not wish me to find the earring, I accept His will and ask that He let me find something that will be better for my soul.”
God seemed to be taking me at my word when I found a misplaced silver bracelet the next morning. He put emphasis on the point when a gold ring I had been missing for days turned up that afternoon. And to be sure that I understood the I-am-not-your-genie-and-I-do-not-grant-wishes state of things, He let me drop my glasses so I could find a lost pair of gloves in the crease between my car’s driver’s seat and door the following night.
Now I know what you are thinking. “Boy, Colleen sure loses a lot of stuff.”
Yes, yes, but let us not get distracted because my story continues.
“My gloves!” I cried to my son, Julian, who was standing on the sidewalk in lightly blowing snow, waiting to walk to the church that was a couple of blocks away. We were headed for an Advent Hymn night. Julian is sixteen years old, and I was considering it a miracle that he had agreed to come with me on a cold, snowy night to an old, unfamiliar church where scripture and a choir would take us through the story of the Old Testament prophets, the Angel of the Lord visiting Mary, and the promise Christ makes that he will come again.
Julian and I sat in a pew next to a lone woman who looked up, smiled, and handed us a program.
“Welcome,” she whispered. Then she added, “You’re new,” while laying her hand on my arm and then greeting Julian. “This will be an inspiring night.”
The choir invited us to sing with them. Hearing the strong voice of the woman next to me, I sang with abandon, moved to tears by the unison of voices, the story of Christ’s coming, and the love that filled my heart as I thought of my own sons as babies. As the evening ended and we all stood to leave, the woman in the pew grabbed us both and gave Julian a penetrating look.
“You get double points in Heaven for coming, Julian.”
Julian smiled shyly and nodded.
Then she leaned towards him, pressed her fingers into his arm and said, “If you pray for my son, Matthew, I will pray for you.”
Julian nodded again. “I will pray for Matthew.”
Monday morning, I woke early and fired up the prayer app on my phone for my daily reflection on the Gospel with Bible scholar, Jeff Cavins. Monday’s topic? Miracles and God-incidences! A Roman centurion goes to Jesus and asks that he heal his servant who is in the centurion’s home, paralyzed with sickness. Jesus says, “Sure, I’ll be right over,” but the centurion protests that he is not worthy to have the Lord enter under his roof.
“Only say the word, and my servant shall be healed.”
Jesus says it is done. The centurion goes home to find the servant healed.
“God can do anything,” Jeff Cavins intoned through my earbuds, “He can do miracles, and He can gift us with a God-incidence.” Not a coincidence. A God-incidence. Not a full-on miracle, but a moment that, “if we have eyes to see and ears to hear,” Jeff Cavins says, reminds us that we should pray for people because prayer works.
I thought about finding the bracelet, the ring, and the gloves. Saint Anthony had petitioned for a decent God-incidence. How could I complain? I would remain grateful and pray the last little bit of “but I want my earring” out of me before bed. There had to be a Litany of Detachment and Acceptance somewhere in the Catholic prayer canon that would replace want of the earring with surrender to His will.
Two hours later, I headed back to the YMCA for my Monday trip to the gym. The lady who had told me to pray to Saint Anthony was there, and I asked her if anything had turned up in the pool filter basket. She checked and placed an earring into the palm of my hand. My heart leapt and then fell when I saw that this was not my earring. Okay, Colleen, I thought to myself. Enough. The earring is lost. You must accept it.
In the change room putting on my gym shoes, I was consumed with the thought that somewhere in the world my earring lay, lost to me but existing, nonetheless. I suddenly burst out loud, “It is in here somewhere!” Looking around to see if anyone was in there to hear me talking to myself and wondering where that had come from, I checked the floor of the change room for my earring. Eventually, I ended up in the shower area. One by one I checked the stalls, hesitating to pull aside two closed curtains but eventually doing so when I realized there was no one behind them. There, behind the second curtain, and laying in the narrow drainage moat, a foot from the drain, was my earring.
I held the earring high as I strode excitedly to the services counter.
“No way!” Pray-to-Saint-Anthony exclaimed, her eyes widening, when she saw my hand raised in triumph.
I pointed to the sky. “You told me to pray to Saint Anthony! God is good!”
“It’s a miracle!” she cried and then she told me that every night the cleaning staff hose down the change room and shower floors with disinfectant foam. Those floors had been washed three times since AquaFit on Friday.
I walked home in the radiant yellow of God’s morning sunshine, marvelling at the power of prayer, remembering my morning Bible reflection, and giving what had just happened the proper name. A God-incidence.
Arriving home, I came through the door to greet my cleaning lady, Charlotte, who was standing in the front hall.
“You told me to keep an eye out for your earring,” Charlotte said. “Well, I found something. I was cleaning your shower and when I got to the corner, something popped up and landed in the palm of my hand. It was a gold backing.”
“Substack that!” my friend, Nicole, urged me when I told her the story. And so, I sat down today, determined to write a faithful retelling of the God-incidence that had started with a prayer to Saint Anthony of Padua on a Friday and ended with the return of what had been lost, my mom’s earring, on the following Monday.
But while writing this piece, I have found the true purpose of my God-incidence. And like a glint of gold on a dull shower floor, the truth is dazzling.
“Pray for people,” Jeff Cavins said, “because prayer works.”
“If you pray for my son, Matthew, I will pray for you,” the woman in the pew had said to Julian.
I remember that she had sat alone. I remember that she had looked at Julian with wonder, even when he appeared to doze off during a few of the hymns. (He swore he wasn’t sleeping. Listening with his eyes closed, he said). I remember the urgency in her voice when she asked him to pray for her son.
I do not know Matthew. I do not know what cross he bears. I do not know if he is struggling in the world without eyes to see and ears to hear. I do know his mother has asked we pray for him and now I know that Saint Anthony of Padua and God cooked up a three-day boot camp to teach me and by association, Julian, that prayer works. And so, with steadfast faith that Jesus will come, in a manger two thousand years ago, on a cloud at some time in the future, into our hearts today, and into Matthew’s life when it is time to heal him, we will pray.
“Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof but only say the word and your servant shall be healed.”
This is the fastest I have written and recorded a story. My only explanation for finding my words so quickly is that God wanted the tale to be told. Happy Advent if you’re celebrating and my heartfelt prayers for a season of light and love to everyone!
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