Rose Kennedy was asked by an interviewer if there were but one thing she could bequeath her children what it would be.
Marabel Morgan quoted her answer. It wouldn't be wealth or lands or estates or privilege. It would be faith. FAITH!
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A Mother's Prayer (Celine Dion) I pray you'll be my eyes And watch her where she goes And help her to be wise Help me to let go Every mother's prayer Every child knows Lead her to a place Guide her with your grace To a place where she'll be safe |
I pray she finds your light And holds it in her heart As darkness falls each night Remind her where you are Every mother's prayer Every child knows Need to find a place Guide her to a place Give her faith so she'll be safe Lead her to a place Guide her with your grace To a place where she'll be safe |
Most of my grandchildren are still too young to be thinking much about what they want from life except the next allowance and the penny candies they are going to load up on at the News Store. Or being allowed to crew in races. And dolls and footballs. Ice-cream sodas and going to movies. Dreams of glory and Boston cream pies.
Even the older ones are still too young to know what they really want.
I don't and will not try to impose my ideas and values on them (not that it would do any good if I did), and I don't pry into their lives. I don't have the opportunity to see them enough in a directly personal way, relaxed, and conversational way to know what they are thinking about most things. Although we do sometimes have religious discussions I often find their ideas about the Church, about faith, about God are groping, tentative, skeptical, and thus, to me, rather difficult to understand. When I have talked with them about Holy Week they were interested, but there was little knowledge about it even among those who had attended Catholic Schools and even though some had been to the Holy Land. And the idea of going to church because it's Lent didn't seem to occur to some of them.
But of course the Church has changed too. The ancient rule of no meat on Fridays -- which I remember so well my father, in public life, had to be so careful about official luncheons and banquets -- and the rule of fasting after midnight before taking Communion (now it's only one hour) and such things were based on the idea of self-sacrifice. So, in my lifetime, life has changed on every level. I daresay that at the present pace of events in the world the rate will become even more dizzying than it has been.
And so, in this world of change, in which it is very easy for anyone to become confused, I think naturally of my grandchildren, and perhaps the great-grandchildren I may be lucky enough to see, and of those even beyond that generation, and I wonder what I can say that will be meaningful.
The best I can do is to pass on to them some of my own ideas and a few special hopes. Again calling on the insights of others past and present for extra perspectives.
I hope they will realize where they came from and how they happen to be where they are. They came -- on the Kennedy-Fitzgerald side -- from ancestors who were quite poor and disadvantaged through no fault of their own but who had the imagination, the resolve, the intelligence, and the energy to seek a newer, better world for themselves and their families. And had the willingness to work as hard as they had to, and suffer whatever had to be suffered, and to look to the future and plan for whatever could be planned, and to seize gratefully on any piece of good luck that came their way. If none came, to look for it, look for opportunity.
In a short time, just a few generations, these beleaguered Irish immigrants had produced a family to whom many in the world looked in admiration. It was an inspiring story. They are the continuing part of it, and I hope they will try always to be worthy of it.
I hope they will realize and remember that the United States of America was one of the few places -- perhaps almost the only place -- in the world where this saga could have happened. I hope they will always feel a deep sense of gratitude toward this country, and deep pride in it, and a deep obligation to preserve, protect, and defend it. If they choose to take the means of political life and public office, so much the better, for this has been so much a part of our family tradition, and it would please me to think of its being continued. But there are other careers, other ways and means, full time or part time or spare time as the case may be and circumstances may permit. Everyone should do something for the common good of this country and all its humanity.
I hope they will have courage. And my definition of the term would be similar to that given by Socrates (I believe):
"We are capable at the same time of taking risks and of estimating them beforehand. Others are brave out of ignorance. When they stop to think they begin to fear. But the man who most truly can be accounted brave is he who most knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible, then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come."
I hope they will have strength to bear the inevitable difficulties and disappointments and griefs of life. Bear them with dignity and without self-pity. Knowing that tragedies befall everyone, and that although one may seem to be singled out for special sorrows that is not really so; that worse things have happened many times to others in the world, and that it is not tears but determination that makes pain bearable.
I hope they will comprehend that the span of any life is short and all the days and hours are precious. I hope they will live life fully while they are alive, in all the dimensions of both its duties and its beauties. Here are some lines from Cardinal Newman:
"God created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I have a part in a great work; I am a link in the chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good. I shall do His work."
Very often I am asked about what people like to call my 'philosophy of life.' When it is put that way it always seems to me to be a rather formidable expression, and one too profound to respond to in simple terms. All the same, like everyone else, I am sure I do have certain principles and values which have always loomed large in my approach to life and the problems we all face in living it to the best of our abilities. Now, as I approach my eighty-fourth year -- it seems even older when I see it in print -- I find it interesting to reflect on what has made my life, even with its moments of pain, an essentially happy one.
I have come to the conclusion that the most important element of human life is faith.
If God were to take away all His blessings, health, physical fitness, wealth, intelligence, and leave me but one gift, I would ask for faith -- for with faith in Him, in His goodness, mercy, love for me, and belief in everlasting life, I believe I could suffer the loss of my other gifts and still be happy -- trustful, leaving all to His inscrutable providence. When I start my day with a prayer of consecration to Him, with complete trust and confidence, I am perfectly relaxed and happy regardless of what accident of fate befalls me because I know it is part of His divine plan and He will take care of me and my dear ones.
For me, faith means the continuing awareness of the existence of God, not in some far-off and unrelated manner, but as an object of a spiritual experience in which I am personally involved. I am as confident of God's existence as I am of my own, and I see Him as Lord and Savior relating lovingly to all who are created by His hand. He reveals Himself in His Word and for Catholics especially He reveals Himself also in His Church, and both of these must be experienced in faith to comprehend the riches they enfold.
We must guard against the thought that faith is mere credulity or that we can simply talk or reason ourselves into possessing it; the truth is that just as it centers upon God, so too it comes from him to those who seek it. Nor should we think of faith either as something we are born into, a kind of family legacy in the spiritual realm. Although we teach our children very early in life what we call the truths of faith, each one of them at some time in his or her development as a human being must pray for the gift of faith, must personally accept the gift of faith, and cherish it as his or her own.
What I want to make clear is that from faith, and through it, we come to a new understanding of ourselves and all the world about us. It puts everything into a spiritual focus, if I may say it that way, so that with love, and joy, and happiness, along with worry, sorrow, and loss, become a part of a large picture which extends far beyond time and space.
I often hear from people who have been stricken with some kind of overwhelming tragedy, and at the same time that they write they are often very close to desolation. Naturally, I feel very strongly[ for such people, and I try to console them as best I can, although this is difficult when one knows them only by the few words of a brokenhearted letter.
Then I tell them that out of my own experience I feel that one must turn to God in faith, knowing that His loving-kindness is never far from us and that His providence never allows us to be tested beyond our strength. If we can truly believe in His presence and goodness to us, we are never alone or forsaken.
During my long lifetime I have found three devotions which were of special spiritual inspiration to me. The rosary has helped me to lead a happy life devoted to the love of God and for the benefit of my family and friends, and the welfare of my neighbor. The rosary may be a silly symbol for some people, but for me if I cannot sleep, if I am worried on a plane, if I am pacing the floor overwrought in thinking of my husband's illness and I hold the rosary in my hand, it gives me comfort, trust, serenity, a sense of understanding by the Blessed Mother because as I have talked and prayed to her all my life, in happy, successful times, I know now that she will understand and comfort me and bring me solace in my anxious troubled moments -- and sometimes I have given a rosary to my friends when they are exhausted and baffled by their problems -- and so many times I have heard them say, "Oh Rose, if only I had your faith. If only I could have the trust and confidence in the Almighty which you have."
And so I have urged my children and grandchildren to embrace this faith bequeathed to them, to foster it, to try to strengthen it by prayer, reading, and study, seeking information on dogma that they cannot understand.
Second, another favorite devotion of mine is the Meditations by Cardinal Newman, which always brings me consolation when I am discouraged and find myself in an inexplicable dilemma -- some turn of events that seems to be unexpected and unnecessary.
And my third great source of inspiration is my devotion to the Stations of the Cross. As we know [we who are Catholic], the fourteen pictures represent events in the last three hours of our Lord's life just before His death. I follow this journey often, in church, kneeling before each one as I knelt in Jerusalem on the Via Dolorosa. I see Jesus, silent, in the early scenes of the false accusations against Him. I see His mother meet Him in the fourth station uncomplaining about His cruel fate, and I ask her to help me and my children, too, to carry our crosses. I see Jesus fall three times on this journey, bowed down by fatigue and the weight of the cross but continuing the journey undaunted, unlamenting, and I recall His words in the Garden of Gethsemane to His Heavenly Father, "Not My Will but Thy Will be done." I repeat His words again and again. Finally, the twelfth station when He died, and I think of my three sons in their last moments -- on their final missions, undertaken for the benefit of humanity -- and I bow by head in silent resignation to God's Holy Will. I think of my eldest son, Joe, when his airplane exploded over the English Channel. I recall kneeling heartbroken at Jack's catafalque in the Rotunda at Washington, and I weep again at the remembrance of Bobby's funeral cortege, in New York, led by Ethel and his ten children.
At the fourteenth station, I see the Blessed Mother view, for the last time, her Son placed in the tomb. I think again of my beloved ones. I take renewed strength and courage in the thought that as Jesus Christ rose from the dead, my sons and daughters will one day rise again and we all shall be happy together, never more to be separated. My spirits are lightened and my heart rejoices, and I thank God for my belief in the Resurrection. "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, even if he die, shall live; and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die."
This promise has been a steady source of guidance and inspiration throughout my life, and I hope and pry that all who read this book may find renewed peace and strength and joy in these thoughts.
Taken from
CONCLUSION
Times to Remember.
MOM WOW
Traditional Motherhood
Few public families have given so much to AmericaAs the Kennedy's. From Joe, Jr., who gave his life for his country when his plane was downed by the Nazi's in World War II. Then "Jack" Kennedy, our beloved President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas TX, 22 November 1963. Then Robert F. Kennedy, "Bobby" -- a political gut-fighter transformed by sorrow into an idealist and almost a spiritual beacon, a great soul, as they say. Will the Kennedy heart break ever end?
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memobry of thhe loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. [A Lincoln, 21 Nov 1864]
The Christian Faith of George Washington
JFK: Let us go forth to lead the land we love
Lead, Kindly Light: John Henry Cardinal Newman
The Vulgate: lighting a candle and rolling back the dark
The Christian founding of the new world: the testimony of Columbus
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