"I acknowledge Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise Thee for my first rudiments of being, and my infancy, whereof I remember nothing..." The Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo
 |
| Palm Sunday 2022 |
We first suspected that we were expecting a new baby on the feast of All Saints, 2021. We were both in denial, though. Theodore wasn't even 7 months old and there just wasn't any way...was there? Turns out there was.
It was a long time before we told anyone else; friends or family. It wasn't until after the new year, when Elizabeth began to show, that we told her family. We finally decided that we better get our head in the game, some time in January. This little baby was making her presence known and we decided to make a plan. Theo had been born at a hospital in Austin during the craziness that was the covid scare, and the entire experience was such a train wreck, that we decided this new baby would be born at home with a midwife, just like four of her old brothers and sisters had been.
This little one would be baby number twelve for us and we felt like we had a pretty good handle on how things typically go. If you get through the first trimester without a miscarriage, then it's just a waiting game. We'd done it eight times before, and number nine, would be just fine.
In March I'd gotten an out of the blue, unexpected call from a childhood friend, whom I hadn't spoken to in a decade. Fr. Martin Bernhard,OSB, had grown up in Fredericksburg, a couple of years my junior. We'd both attended Texas A&M, and gotten to know one another well in the summer and fall of 2003, when I'd come back to the Catholic Church. As a newly minted "D&C Butt" in the Corps of Cadets, I had a lot more free time than I'd had in my previous two years, and I was bound and determined to take advantage of it. He and I, along with another friend, spent many Sundays traveling around Texas experiencing the liturgies we'd never heard of growing up. We wound up at a free Astros game one Sunday after our first Byzantine Divine Liturgy, were moved to tears hearing the Lord's prayer sung in Aramaic at the Maronite Church in Austin, and most significantly, for the first time experienced the austere beauty of the Roman Canon prayed silently at a low Mass in Downtown Houston. The following semester I left for Honduras for 6 months and when I returned, Brandon (his given name) had up and transferred to Steubenville. But we kept in touch still and followed his discernment from afar. He was in our wedding, I put friends in contact with him in Rome where he was studying as a seminarian, he'd visit from time to time when he was back on breaks, and we went to his priestly ordination for the diocese of Tyler. About one year later, though, he decided to join the Benedictines in Norcia, Italy, and after that we lost contact.
So when my phone rang on a Tuesday in March, 2022 with an Italian number showing up in the caller id, I figured it was just some sort of weird robo call. It wasn't. "Hellooo Jason, this is Fr. Martin. I'm in the area and wanted to visit with you." Of course we said yes. I took off of work and headed home. Elizabeth cancelled our after school activities and we just had a great two hour visit. He prayed with us, blessed all manner of things, talked with the kids and with us. It was wonderful. He had to go meet with donors to the monastery that night, though, and so we said our goodbyes. In the late hours of the
night, waiting for sleep to come, I was joyful, but gun-shy.
.jpg)
A nagging feeling had led me to say yes, when the midwife asked us if we'd like to do the tests for genetic screening. We'd never done it before, but for some reason we did this time. We were far beyond ever considering abortion due to a genetic anomaly, as so many sadly choose in our bloodthirsty society, but I did want to know for some reason, if there was anything to be concerned about. As it would happen, there was.
The next weekend, Elizabeth left on on a girls' trip with her sister. That's when the idea for a pilgrimage first entered my mind. We stayed local for Mass on Sunday. It's been hard for me to go to the Mass just down the road. It's where I was baptized, confirmed and communed for the first time. It's seen a lot of the events of my life over the last 40 years. But one thing it has never been is inspiring. Burlap banners, blasé, off-key singing, polyester vestments and plain, unadorned walls, it is the epitome of the boredom of the last 70 years that has not so much killed the faith of millions, as allowed it to slowly starve. I knelt there after Mass, thinking about how I may well be stuck here in this parish, for the rest of my life, if this new child's needs were such that travel became an impossibility. In that moment I offered up the death of my own will in such matters, if that is what the Lord wished, but, like Augustine, who in his "wretched youth" asked for chastity and constancy, but not yet, I also mixed my own prayer with the alloy of self will.
I majored in history, minored in clas
sics, studied and taught Latin and the history of Rome, but had never visited the Eternal City. I wanted one last hurrah before entering into the death to self, I knew I must. So I began planning. It was only as an afterthought, through guilt of my own selfishness, that I conceived of my trip as a pilgrimage. Perhaps this was God's mercy to me, though, because once I had settled on the pilgrimage, it became clear that this was something I could do about the situation. I could pray, I could go barefoot, I could fast, I could travel by foot and sleep on the streets if need be and by my own pitiful efforts show God that I desperately wanted this little child and all that came with her. I spoke to Elizabeth when she got home and she gave me her blessing. I bought the tickets to Rome for Holy Week. I then sent a message to Fr. Martin letting him know my plan. He gave me his blessing too. I was set.
We had already decided to name her Azalea, after St. Marie Azelie (Zelie) Martin, the mother of the Little Flower. I had it in my mind that if I could somehow bring back a relic of St. Zelie, our Zelie would have a much easier time at life. I wrote the following letter to the pastor of the parish we'd been attending, St. Martin de Porres in Dripping Springs:
