His name was Juan Diego, and while genetically he was related to the American Indians, he was a peasant of Mexico, and the recipient of Christ’s mother’s messages to the indigenous natives of Mexico.  Her image on his tilma (cloak) has survived since 1531 despite climate change and a terrorist attack.

Juan is now a saint of the Catholic Church, and his cloak is on display at the basilica of Guadalupe just a little outside of Mexico City.  His patroness, Our Lady of Guadalupe, is known for many intercessions on behalf of the poor and afflicted who seek her out in prayer.  Her shrine is the most visited religious shrine in the world.

If you believe enough, she’ll speak for you and your prayer.

To be a psychiatrist, and be allowed to judge people’s sanity from what they say!  Temporary misalignments of the reasoning cortex are ignored, and you are what you say!  There is no forgiveness.  It seems almost an inhumane profession.  Give me the Church, where a sinner can ask forgiveness for his errors.

But it is the world that God created, and as such it must be good.  Good can come of it; witness the many mentally ill who are helped by various medicines from the pharmaceutical field.

I thank God he has kept me in the field of sanity, despite temporary mistakes which would question somebody’s rationality from a severe judge.  I hope I’m on my way to meeting the eternal judge, Jesus Christ.

A likable friend from school, he settled in Nebraska and retired to Tennessee.  He could do what I couldn’t, live among strangers and fellow Christians of our Western Civilization.  It’s still a challenge, though the groundwork has been laid.  Christ died to make people friendlier to each other.

We seldom realize that we are reaping that sowing, that turning of the soil by the first Christians.  From crucifying Romans, Western Civilization became hospital building citizens, and charity contributors.  We do more than go to the moon.

Through prayer we keep contact with that Almighty figure on the cross, crucified voluntarily in the souls of his followers.

God answers prayers.   I have been in impossible situations of my own doing, and a few minutes after a panicked “hail Mary” prayer I have seen the sky lighten and been engulfed in a kind of peace.  The spiritual is not “magic thinking.”  It is dealing with a force of Nature.

Faith in prayer takes years to develop, but for the reverent citizen, it is worth it.  There are times when we fear a panicked weakling position more than anything else in the world, and we have a God who protects us from that.  This does not mean Jesus is a mounted knight to save us from ill-conceived ventures; we must develop our own serious judgment ability.

Our Anglo-Saxon departure of good-bye is a shortened version of the Old English “God be wi’ ye”, an admonition to stay devout and sober.

“Where’s Al?” the ninety-year-old asked her husband who had just then taken her out to dinner.  She looked around the restaurant.

“I’m right here,” he answered patiently.

“Oh, I don’t mean you.  I mean the man who usually takes care of me.”  That was Al, her husband.

Scenes like that happen in daily life, and people ask, “What did I do to deserve this?”

I can’t answer that question, because I’m not the Universal Judge.  But I can say, look for help from organizations like Medicare or from your savings, and last but not least, pray for Divine Help.