11. Half a Million Hail Marys

My father, despite his job in a laboratory firmly rooted in the physical world, held an unwavering belief in the tangible power of prayer. And no portrait of him would be complete without acknowledging his devote Catholicism and all the Hail Marys. This faith defined him throughout his life, but particularly in his later years.

“Has prayer helped?” I once asked.

“Thousands of times.”

God came first in my father’s life. Following his retirement, he attended Mass every day, often joined by my mother in the years before she died. Without exaggeration, while he was saying the rosary, he must have recited the Hail Mary more than half a million times in his lifetime.

I'm unsure if my firmly lapsed Catholicism disappointed my father, though I suspect piety was something he would have wished for me. When I left for university, I abandoned the Catholic Church and all its teachings I couldn’t rationalize or accept. I turned my back on the Baltimore Catechism, the textbook used in Sunday school to instill such tenets as: no salvation outside the Catholic Church, papal infallibility, and the concept of original sin removable only through baptism. While my father never said anything, he quietly demonstrated that prayer and observance were integral to how he lived.

He found comfort in his familiarity with the twinkling votive candles at the back of the church, the fourteen stations of the cross depicted on plaster panels that hung below the stained-glass windows, the priest’s thurible filled with clouds of burning incense, and the birdbath of holy water at the church entrance, where he had paused thousands of times over the course of a lifetime to make the sign of the cross.

Apart from Sundays, he attended the eight o’clock Mass on weekday mornings, when the church was nearly deserted, with only a few elderly people in the pews. During those early mornings, he loved serving as an altar boy while the real altar boys were at school. He fulfilled this function until he was so frail he could no longer climb the steps to the altar. And he loved showing off that he still remembered the prayers of the traditional Latin Mass so many decades after he had learned them. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…the words forever engraved in his memory.

Faith was the air that he breathed. If he lost his glasses or misplaced his hearing aid, he prayed to St. Anthony, patron saint of all things lost. And he always found the item. He prayed during the difficult moments of his life and for a good death. I know this because I once asked him what he had been thinking about as he lay helplessly splayed on the floor for hours after a fall, an incident that occurred in his retirement home apartment. He stubbornly refused to press the little button on the gadget around his neck that would immediately summon help.

“If I pressed the button, the ambulance would take me to the emergency at the hospital. I just wanted someone to help me stand up and get back to bed. I prayed not to die this way on the bathroom floor.”

My father’s book of daily prayers was always by his side or within easy reach. He took comfort from that well-worn volume with its faded celadon-green linen cover, its broken spine bound together with tape, and its well-thumbed pages, many marked with little slips of paper. He prayed for family, sick friends, and strangers he thought needed God’s help. He once told me he prayed for me.

“Thank you,” I replied, unsure of what else to say.

The example set by my father has led to my occasional attendance at synagogue services with my Jewish husband. While I never converted to Judaism, I still feel welcome in this Reform synagogue that imposes no conditions on my being there. It’s clear to me that I would feel far less welcome in any other synagogue; there are many conservative synagogues I would not enter. My presence here started with Jonathan’s and his family’s long history with this synagogue, but it’s not why I remain.

Truth be told, I attend services and stay connected because of my admiration for the female Rhodes scholar rabbi and the inclusivity she has fostered. There are several non-Jewish members who have walked in and stayed because they feel the same. And it satisfies some of my hunger for a more structured and ethical framework to navigate an increasingly harder-to-understand world.

I find solace in the lilting singing, the moments of stillness, and the sermons of the brilliant rabbi. The intonation and cadence of the Hebrew prayers hold a familiarity reminiscent of the traditional Latin Mass from my early childhood. Perhaps I appreciate the synagogue experience because Judaism seems more about questions and values than dogma.

For sure, I can remain safely on the periphery—cynical about organized religious systems. In the synagogue, I do not have to contend with the immaculate conception or the presence of God in a communion wafer. Catholic dogma has always perplexed me, and I don’t need to attend Mass in order to have a spiritual life and to understand that creation itself is a miracle or that by the flutter of a butterfly's wings, a typhoon can be set in motion on the other side of the planet.

In the synagogue, my intention is not to replace one religion with another. It's a place where I can contemplate some of the same questions my father may have pondered when he attended Mass. I wonder if my father, too, engaged in silent negotiations with God, just as I do when confronted with life's challenges.

In these moments of reflection, my thoughts inevitably turn to my father. Although I haven't found solace in the faith-based answers that brought him such profound comfort, I admire the unwavering faith that was his bedrock, providing him strength during the darkest moments a human being could endure. I'm certain that if we had discussed my occasional attendance at the synagogue, he would have reached out, taken my hand in his, and offered me an understanding smile.