Mother’s Day
My mother passed December 1st of 2019. I believe that she wanted to squeeze one more check out of the federal government or guarantee that her kids wouldn’t have to give back the November money. Either way, my mom was always looking out for us.
My mother and father were Roman Catholic, so us kids are Roman Catholics although not near as Catholic as our mother. She gathered us around our parents’ bed to kneel and pray the rosary every night. She was the enforcer during lent, making sure that we abstained from meat on Fridays, didn’t overeat and gave generously from our savings. (My dad believed that his wife carried the burden prayer for the family.)
Mom had her faults and regrets, but she believed in the power of prayer and in the saints. She collected palm fronds on Palm Sunday and burned them during severe storms for protection. She lit candles, said novenas to various saints and told us stories of how the saints had helped so many people on so many occasions.
She told us of the Sisters of Loretto in Santa Fe, their cathedral built without a staircase to the choir loft. Numerous architects were consulted, but none could find a workable solution. The sisters prayed a novena to Saint Joseph and on the ninth and final day of the novena, a carpenter appeared and offered to build the staircase. Over the next few months, the carpenter worked steadily creating a spiral staircase with no visible means of support and made of spruce, a tree not native to New Mexico. It has been called a marvel of engineering. The work done, the carpenter walked away without payment and the nuns never saw or heard from him again. Some claim he was a Frenchman living in New Mexico, but we know it was Saint Joseph himself.
The chapel has long since been de-commissioned by the church and is now a private museum, the mystery and miraculous nature of the gift now just an architectural anomaly.
Mom believed that Saint Anthony had intervened in her mother’s life after grandma lost her purse. My grandmother, raising eight children on her own, my grandfather in a perpetual drunken stupor, needed every penny. Panicked, grandma immediately fell to her knees and prayed to Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. Before her prayer was finished, there was a knock on her door. A stranger had found her purse and was returning it. Grandma grabbed the purse, thanked him and closed the door, quickly counting her money.
Certain that the cash was there, she realized she should have offered a reward of a few dollars and opened the door to find the stranger gone. She walked out onto the street, but he was nowhere to be found. In our small town, everyone knew everyone else. She had never seen this man before and would never see him again. She was certain it was Saint Anthony.
My mother prayed to Saint Jude, the patron Saint of Lost causes to help her quit smoking and it worked. If you knew my family, Saint Jude was appropriate. I was an altar boy in Catholic school and was going to become a priest, but I grew out of that and went my own way for years, whoring around, becoming an alcoholic and a drug addict. I was a mess.
While going through my mother’s things recently, I came across a 3” X 5” index card, the ink blurred from being held so many times in my mother’s loving hands. It is in my mother’s perfect handwriting and are instructions for a novena to Saint Martha.
Saint Martha is the patron saint of single laywomen, servers, housewives and cooks. She was the sister of Lazarus who Jesus raised from the dead. Jesus was a frequent guest in the house in Bethany that Martha shared with her brother Lazarus and sister Mary. In the gospels of Luke and John, we hear how Jesus and his disciples come to the home and Martha immediately waits on them. Hospitality, in the middle eastern countries, is extremely important, even to this day.
Martha complains when her sister Mary sits to listen to Jesus speak, asking him to tell Mary to help her serve. Jesus mildly chastises her by saying, “Martha, Martha. You are anxious about so many things. There is only need of one thing. Mary has chosen the better part.” (Luke 10:41-42)
But Martha’s faith in Jesus contributes to her brother’s resurrection. When he tells her that he is the resurrection and the life, she believes him and Lazarus is raised. (John 11:38-44) In a later visit, again in the gospel of Luke, there is the merest of mentions when the gospel simply states “Martha served.” (John 12:22) I think that is why my mother related to Saint Martha. Mom was always anxious and worried, always the servant, in the background and too busy taking care of her family to do much else.
Legend relates that Martha then went to Tarascon, France, where a monster, the Tarasque, was a constant threat to the population. The beast from Galicia was a great dragon, half beast and half fish, greater than an ox, longer than a horse, having teeth sharp as a sword, and horned on either side, head like a lion, tail like a serpent, that dwelt in a certain wood between Arles and Avignon. Holding a cross in her hand, Martha sprinkled the beast with holy water. Placing her sash around its neck, she led the tamed dragon through the village.
There Martha lived, occupied in prayer and in fasting. Martha died in Tarascon. Her tomb is located in the crypt of the local Collegiate Church. So, in addition to everything else, some believe that Martha was a dragon slayer or at least, a dragon tamer and is often pictured with a dragon at her feet.
I doubt that the legend is true. (Really, what more do you need to be a saint than to be the sister of Lazarus?)
The prayer on the index card is to be prayed for nine Tuesdays along with three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys and three Glorias and on each day the prayer is said, a candle should be lit and a copy of the prayer left in the church to help another soul in distress and to support the devotion of Saint Martha.
“The miraculous saint grants everything, no matter how difficult and before the termination of the nine Tuesdays,” the card concludes.
The card is dated June 11, 1977 along with nine hash marks. (||||||||) Scrawled in the corners of the card are my mother’s petitions to Saint Martha. One for my brother Pat. It simply says “Job. Temperance. Return to faith.”
And another for me that says “Job,” and “Resolution of case-re; Jason in his favor.”
Neither one of her prayers were answered, at least not in the way she had hoped.
My brother, a serious alcoholic from the age of 21, never did stop drinking. He was never able to hold a job and even though he was a brilliant artist and had his own lath and plaster company, he was never able to keep it running well enough to make a living. He died in a hospital bed, his insides liquified and his organs failing. In his comatose state, agonizing and in withdrawal, we did hear him cry out “Help me Jesus,” several times. It was both agonizing and hopeful, but his delusions and convulsions stopped.
As for me, I also held a series of menial jobs even after I married, struggling as a musician until I found steady work in radio. The court case my mother was referring to was my irresponsible act of getting my first girlfriend pregnant. She quickly married someone else, divorced him and then married another man. I sued for paternity, unusual in those days and I did win in court, but six months later, the judge revoked my parental rights in “the best interest of the child.” I did not see my son for another 25 years.
My mother believed with all her heart that this prayer would fix everything and she must have been so disappointed when her miracle was not delivered to her.
Holding the ink smeared card up to the computer screen to get a better look at the writing, I noticed something; an image of a woman’s face. I know that it is from the ink bleeding this direction or that and the light catching it just so, but my mother would know that it was the face of Saint Martha, proof of an answer to her prayer for her wayward sons.
Prayer to Saint Martha
Saint Martha, I resort to your protection and in my faith offer this light which I shall burn every Tuesday.
Comfort me in my difficulties and through the great favor thou didst enjoy when the Savior was lodged in thy house.
Intercede for me and my family that we may be able to hold God close to our hearts and be provided for in our necessities.
I beseech you to have infinite pity in regard to the favor I ask.
I ask of thee, Saint Martha, that I may be able to overcome all difficulties as thou didst overcome the dragon which thou hadst at thy feet. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
(Mention your request here.)
Say the prayer for nine Tuesdays along with three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys and three Gloria Patris and on each day the prayer is said, a candle should be lit and a copy of the prayer left in the church to help another soul in distress and to support the devotion of Saint Martha. The miraculous saint grants everything, no matter how difficult and before the termination of the nine Tuesdays.
Copyright 2025 by Jose Antonio Ponce