Saint Jude

Saint Jude

Antoinette Swanson

While walking down the street, I stopped at the corner and waited for the light to signal that I could cross it, and I saw this image of Saint Jude. The picture was on a piece of paper that was rugged and had stains and looked like someone had just flung it up, perhaps a long time ago, perhaps not. Beside the picture was a prayer, asking for protection and intercession. Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes (among other things) in the Catholic tradition. People ask for the intercession of a saint to pray on their behalf, to intercede for the prayers to God, and pray for the intercession of particular saints who have a "specialty" in/for that specific cause or need. 

As the light changed, I began to walk across the street, but not before turning to see where the picture was. Looking back, I saw that it was on the corner of Mount Sinai Hospital. This was particularly poignant to me. As a Catholic, we see prayer cards--which this seemed to be--and rosaries all the time in liturgical centers of churches. But seeing a prayer card posted for the world to see said something more than what the "typical" prayer cards do. It said that it demanded to be noticed, felt, and used for someone's or one's personal sake. 

I think there's something important  in this picture/prayer's placement, in that that moment of needing to pray--even the idea of what brings someone to prayer--for a lost cause is that moment when one loses all hope. This brought me to realize what religion can do: bring hope. There is a unity in prayer--such as that that Theron Ware experiences as he watches a gathering at a man's house before he dies. All the same, there is a hope from the comfort that others bring you when you pray, when you ask for an intercession from a saint. It reminds you that you're not alone, that your lost cause will not be suffered alone (and then, with people, maybe you won't suffer at all). Hospitals are places where lost causes are all one can think of when a loved one or friend (or from a doctor's perspective, a patient) goes there, looking for (usually) a cure to their ailment. But with the card there, it seems as if all those experiences of loss are just experiences that bring people closer together, that bring unity and hope, as we place our hope in the hands of the doctors who care for us and, through prayer the saints and God above. Someone placing the prayer card of a saint of lost causes is trying to tell the world something: you're not alone. And that in itself is religious.

There is something else in a prayer card though, and that is the materialness of it. We all like to hold on to things to feel the closeness to the person who held or owned it. For example, we never let go of the shirts from passed family members, or of the rosaries given to us or blessed by a particular priest (or even those shirts you wore when that band member hugged you at that one concert). We do the same thing with people; we hold on to them to feel their closeness, to know they are near. I think the same goes for prayer cards, or just religious objects in general: we hold on to that which makes us feel safe, normal, and home. We hold on to prayer cards of saints that have meaning to us because holding it is reassurance. Having that object is the best physicality we can have of something or someone that is already in our hearts, even if the object is simply a representation only.

Seeing that prayer card reminded me of the importance of closeness of unity and of the optimism and hope that religion gives us. They're declarations of being comforted and not alone, and that one doesn't have to suffer alone, whether on a street corner, in a hospital, in church, or in the comfort of our own homes or selves. We hold on to religion and we hold on to those representations of that which keeps us company, so we can hold on to something, so we don't have to be alone, and so that we have hope.