A Mother’s Prayer
by Jennifer Lendvai-Lintner
Repentance: the action or process of repenting, especially for one’s misdeeds or moral shortcomings
— Merriam-Webster
Repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life…
— The Catechism of the Catholic Church
With little fingers, I mush the contents of a tiny plastic packet awaiting instruction from my teacher that I can open it. When she says it’s time, I pull out the long beaded strand. It meets in a “Y” at the Miraculous Medal before descending to a crucifix. It is 1987 and I am eight and these waxy, translucent, yellowy-greenish beads even glow in the dark. Oh, how I want to slip them over my head like a necklace and admire them against the dark plaid of my jumper, but I don’t dare. The rosary is for praying, not accessorizing. This is rule number one. It’s true my teacher wouldn’t see if I snuck them down the hall to the pink Chiclet-tiled bathroom for just a peek… but I’d never do it. Not with the Virgin Mary elevated on her little perch benevolently presiding over my classroom from the corner. Her ceramic complexion pale, her garments a muted blue, her tender hands extended forward from her sides reaching out to my classmates and me. I wouldn’t dream of defying God’s rosary rule under her watch, in the presence of her immaculate perfection.
* * *
The rosary is for praying, not accessorizing. This is rule number one.
My Catholic elementary school was called Saint Vincent Martyr, but in an alcove at the very heart of the school, no martyr resides. Instead it’s Mary with little Jesus. As we students assemble or dismiss, as we single-file to lunch or music or gym, it is past this perfect mother, this perfect Son we go. We start and end each day with scratchy prayers led over the loudspeaker. We learn phonics and science, math and reading. Religion is a subject, too. We learn about Jesus and His mother. We learn the Golden Rule. We memorize prayers. We know we must be good. We must not sin, but if we do, we have the sacrament of Reconciliation to get us back to a state of grace. We confess our sins to a priest (I used a calculator for my math homework…I said ‘Shut up’ to my sister), and he gives us penance to do to set things right. Most of my early penance tasks were to say a certain number of Hail Marys or Our Fathers. I dutifully recite them in my head one after the other. Their rhythm is a soothing mantra.
I have repented. Now I am good. Full of grace.
* * *
The Hail Mary is still my go-to prayer. Long since memorized, it is familiar comfort when I am nervous or scared, see a car wreck on the highway or hear bad news. When I send “thoughts and prayers,” this is what I offer. It is my meditation—a safe place to put my mind to avoid the spiraling it likes so often to do. I repeat it over and over while I’m in labor with my babies, even.
On a trip to Italy shortly before I became a mother, I treated myself to a very special souvenir—a white gold rosary bracelet. The single decade serves as a set of Catholic worry beads around my wrist, and I can don this abbreviated rosary without fear of committing a venial sin. It may not glow in the dark, but the eight-year-old in me delights.
I still pray the simplified rosary I learned in grade school—predominately Hail Marys, Glory Bes and the Our Father. It was fairly far into adulthood that I learned I was praying it kind of wrong. There are biblical mysteries one is supposed to meditate on when saying the rosary. Joyful mysteries like the Annunciation, when Mary is picked to be Jesus’s mother; Sorrowful mysteries like when Jesus is crucified; Glorious mysteries like when He is resurrected or when Mary is crowned queen of heaven and earth; and Luminous mysteries like Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan. These mysteries are composed of events involving both Jesus and Mary—mother and Son inextricably entwined.
* * *
I am standing in a pickle tent when I go ice cold with a realization. As I pass my two-year-old her weekly farmer’s market treat—a pickle on a stick—I quickly count the days. It’s a warm Thursday in September and only two days into the school year. I have a toddler and I just accepted a hefty teaching assignment which means brand-new curriculum, heaps of planning, and now I’m late. I think No—then Oh, no as I recall a debaucherous date night smack in the middle of the propitious window. I duck into the corner pharmacy to purchase two two-packs of tests – one box just never believable enough. At home all four tests beam PREGNANT from the granite countertop. Shoot is my first thought. How will I do this?
I don’t have to worry for long. A few weeks later as I stand at the front of my classroom a dull fist squeezes beneath my navel and I go cold again. I rush to the bathroom as soon as I can. No, I exhale when I spy a brownish-red stain. From the privacy of a tiny annex in the school library, I frantically call my OB. They can see me later that day. I Hail Mary my way to the doctor’s office, but when I get there, they confirm what I already know: I am losing this baby. I was careless with a blessing, ungrateful. It feels like punishment.
Look what I have done.
* * *
It was fairly far into adulthood that I learned I was praying it kind of wrong. There are biblical mysteries one is supposed to meditate on when saying the rosary.
My professor strides to the podium in a deer-stalker cap à la Sherlock Holmes. It’s an interesting choice for an art historian, but I suppose there’s an element of detective work in decoding the art of old. So much of the art he deciphers for us is religious, Christian specifically. We learn that color has meaning and objects are symbols. Hand gestures are a language all their own. While peace and love are certainly on-brand, the Christ child’s two raised fingers aren’t some early hippie hallmark; they mean benediction. The Virgin is a popular muse. She is always depicted wholesome and pure—immaculately maternal. Mary is in slide after slide, almost always with her Son. If He’s a baby or boy when they are rendered, it’s called a Madonna and Child. If Christ is crucified in the depiction with His mother, the art is a pietà.
One morning in this Introduction to Art History class, a pietà—perhaps the most famous—is projected on a screen in a huge, echoey lecture hall. This pietà, sculpted of marble by Michelangelo, is housed in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. My professor draws our attention to a fascinating peculiarity in this sculpture. Despite Michelangelo’s skill and remarkable ability to transfigure stone into fabric and flesh with astonishing accuracy, the bodies of Mary and Jesus in this rendition are wildly disproportionate in size. In fact, if these figures were positioned side by side, Mary would tower over Jesus, standing nearly twice His size.
Why would a master do this? Some say it was to create visual harmony in the piece, since Mary is seated and Jesus is lying across her lap. If they were closer in size, the body of Jesus would overwhelm His mother.
* * *
The Italian word pietà is often translated as “pity” or “compassion” or “piety.” But it stems from the Latin pietas, which also translates to “dutifulness.” I think of Jesus’s awful duty and His obedience to it.
Visiting the Vatican, I stand both before Michelangelo’s solid masterpiece and on a precipice about to step into motherhood. I gaze at her lifeless Son stretched across her, and I think about Mary’s duty, too.
* * *
I have a postcard of my favorite Madonna and Child. Painted by William Adolphe Bouguereau, The Madonna of the Lilies is resplendent. It’s an astounding piece of art. Like she is so often depicted, her eyes are cast demurely down like the Marys I’ve known since childhood. In the postcard print, the Virgin seems to glow, ethereal. Bouguereau, I learn, achieved this luminescence by applying the paint layer upon layer.
The ways artists render Mary intrigue me. The ceramic statues of my grammar school showed her soft, white, graceful, pure. Diminutive. But one master artist layers strata of paint to build up Mary in luminous splendor. By another, she is hewn of rock. Formidable, she professes maternal heft.
* * *
There is a photo my husband snapped of me and my eldest on the day she was born. It’s framed in silver on my dresser. It cycles through the digital picture frame at my parents’ house as well. My dad loves this photo. One time he told me it reminds him of a Madonna and Child. In the shot, my eyes are cast down, my daughter a tiny, diapered ball curled on my chest. Sort of wistfully, my dad wondered aloud what I was thinking at the moment the photo was snapped. I remembered. Exactly.
Holy shit.
I keep this to myself, so our illusion remains intact.
* * *
In this season, aside from these preserved moments in predawn silence, I am never alone. But I am frequently lonely.
In the early morning silence of my house in the early years of my motherhood, I journal my prayers, a mug of coffee in hand. A preschool daughter and a toddler son snooze, warm in their bed and crib, respectively. In this season, aside from these preserved moments in predawn silence, I am never alone. But I am frequently lonely.
Though I have been pregnant four times, I have two children. Not many know about the two I lost; they left so early and when that is the case, you’re allotted only so much sadness. It’s as if the size of a fetus determines the acceptable amount of grief. I think of these babies anyway—imagine them in heaven.
* * *
A miscarriage feels like a period coming on, but wrong. Each time I felt my uterus squeeze I’d pray, Please, no. I’m sorry. Don’t let this happen.
Those prayers went unanswered. My apologies were not accepted. Part of me knows miscarriage isn’t penance for ungratefulness. God doesn’t punish this way. Homilies I’d heard taught a loving, forgiving God.
But a miscarriage, like a period, can take agonizing days to complete. So as I teach at the front of my classroom and stuff pretzels into a lidded snack cup and stand at the grocery checkout returning the smile and chitchat of the cashier, clumps of tissue and hot blood drain from my body. And it doesn’t feel like love or forgiveness.
* * *
My transition into motherhood was far from graceful and even years later when my children are school-aged, I’m hardly more adept. I am overwhelmed and sometimes resentful at this unceasing duty. I falter under the weight and sometimes all I wish is to escape it. On Mother’s Day, if my husband orchestrates a plan for all of us to spend the day together, I wish he would send me off somewhere instead. All I want is to be alone. I want to be good—but I am not. I am far too selfish for this.
My transition into motherhood was far from graceful and even years later when my children are school-aged, I’m hardly more adept.
And then I am pregnant with baby number three. But there are complications. Doctors call us high risk. I find out this news at the beginning of Lent, a season of fasting and repentance. I decide to make daily Mass my Lenten sacrifice. It is a troubling time and grounding myself in the stripped down solemnity of weekday Mass is comforting. When I feel myself spiraling, soon enough I’ll be back on a wooden pew to refresh and start again.
The church is a refuge. It’s so solemn and still on these mornings. I believe I must pray obediently, selflessly. Jesus, on His cross, rises two stories behind the altar. God is not a genie after all—a granter of wishes. His will be done.
So, I ask that He help me carry this—it is awfully heavy to hold. I do not ask for what I want the most. At the foot of the cross, I don’t even let these prayers take shape.
* * *
I keep my postcard print of The Madonna of the Lilies tucked into my Bible. One morning at scripture study, my friend spots it.
“You’re keeping her so close right now, aren’t you.”
* * *
“Oh, shit!”
My husband rarely swears, but he just learned I’ll be induced in three hours. He’s at the office, so he scrambles to wrap up a few things and speed home.
Time is tight. We are supposed to report to the hospital in 30 minutes, but as I lower myself into my husband’s car, I turn and ask if we can please stop at church to light a candle on our way. There isn’t enough time. He says, yes.
The midday church is dim. It’s echoey quiet. In the narthex, we light our candle and pray private prayers. After, we travel up to the second pew on the right, kneel, then sit. Here again, beneath the cross.
Inside Holy Trinity, the darkness comforts. I’d much rather stay than go, but it is time. My husband grabs my hand. Our steps tip-tap up the center aisle, reverberating in the cavernous sanctuary. Like a dark ribcage, wooden beams sprawl overhead. We pass under stained-glass Mary. Massive mahogany doors deliver us into blinding sun and what comes next.
* * *
Two days after our daughter Hilde is born, she aspirates and becomes very, very sick. My husband has gone upstairs to the NICU with my pumped colostrum, and so he has to bring the news to me when he gets back down to my room in the maternity ward. He shifts from left foot to right. He doesn’t quite meet my eyes. He thinks we are going to lose her. He does not speak this; his tears do.
We have Hilde baptized in a simple ceremony. Performed in the NICU, she’s clad only in a diaper, lots of wires, tubes, and a CPAP anchored to a tiny knit hat. There’s no heirloom gown for this sacrament, no Sunday best, no crowd of jubilant witnesses around a marble font. In this dimly lit room, it is just five of us — my husband, me, Hilde, and our two priests. Hilde is bathed in the bright light of her warmer. We can’t hold her, so lightly I place my hand over her heart. My husband’s hand overlaps mine.
One priest, newly ordained, nervously performs his first-ever hospital baptism. Water, sprinkled from squeaking styrofoam, mixes with an ocean of tears.
* * *
What kind of prayers did Mary send up? What was her mother’s prayer? She said yes to all God asked of her.
Be miraculously impregnated with the Savior for all humankind? Let it be done to me, was her response.
Flee a murderous king in your postpartum haze? Let it be done.
Frantically search for your Savior son when he goes missing as a boy, only to find Him safe and sound, precociously presiding in His Father’s house? Let it be done.
And then it is done. His body is placed into your arms. You cradle His head in the crook of your arm, support His grown-man body across the middle of yours.
Watch with a sense of foreboding as that boy, now a man, is welcomed into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, palm fronds waving. Your mother’s intuition on overdrive despite the fanfare of the mob… Let it be done.
And then that march. Heart-rending helplessness as He staggers to fulfill a merciless, miraculous fate. Let it be done.
And then it is done. His body is placed into your arms. You cradle His head in the crook of your arm, support His grown-man body across the middle of yours. You look for the longest time into His face. You think it will be the last time and you can’t let go. You weep. Because even though you knew all along He was God’s — He was God —He was also yours.
* * *
It couldn’t have been an easy road. Of course Michelangelo made her a mountain.
I spent many years staggering in the glow of her spotless perfection. She was soft and tender and full of grace—immaculate.
But Bouguereau knew only layer upon layer creates that kind of light. The light radiates because of the darkness.
* * *
When Hilde is six weeks old, I sit across from the hospital chaplain. Hilde has never been home.
I’ve trained my brain to pray the right way. I dutifully avoid wishlisting God. Instead, in my head I recite “Thy will be done” or “Hold us in the palm of Your hands” with such frequency and ferocity they are practically incantations.
But I level with this warm stranger.
“I feel like I don’t know how to pray right now. I know how I should be praying… Thy will. Not my will,” I tell him. “It’s selfish, but I want to pray other prayers.”
“What do you want to pray for?”
My voice disappears, a painful lump lodged deep in my throat.
“Time. I want time with her. I want to take her home with us. I want her to grow up.”
“Time,” the chaplain gently repeats.“I don’t think that sounds like a selfish prayer. I think it sounds like a mother’s prayer.”
* * *
The Virgin wields strength and power, but not because she’s immaculate. With her yes, she chose trust and she chose faith. Imperfect and full of grace, I prayed for exactly what I wanted—my daughter, our Hilde. It was not appeasement, but trust.
* * *
With little fingers, Hilde tangles a fistful of my hair. Since she has a rare diagnosis, doctors don’t have certainties for Hilde. Though she’s now four, I still cradle her in the crook of my arm, propped by two firm pillows to support her growing body. I press a kiss to her forehead in the space just above her purple glasses. I can look for the longest time into her face.
Hilde and I often sit together like this. It feels both solid and precarious.
It is a reconciliation.
Among other things, Jennifer Lendvai-Lintner is a writer, teacher, student, and mother. She is the 2023 recipient of the Denise Gess Literary Award for Nonfiction and a 2022 Writer's Digest Award Winner. Jennifer is earning her MA in Writing at Rowan University, where she also teaches First-Year College Writing.
