Last night, when I went to visit Mom, I saw a man at the graveyard looking among the graves. It was early dusk, and just before I began saying the Office for the Dead, I heard Taps. There is a sound system at this cemetery that plays Taps nightly in the area reserved for the graves of fallen military personnel. When I heard Taps, I stopped and faced the flag waving above their graves and held my hand over my heart. The man I saw had also stopped his search, and was standing at attention, his right hand snapped into a full military salute, facing the flag.
After Taps, I began saying Office, and had just started Psalm 121, when this man approached me with a map of the cemetery. He said he was looking for his father's grave. We spoke briefly; he's a veteran and his father was a veteran, and on this Veteran's Day he wanted to find his father's grave. I know the cemetery fairly well in that area by now, so I'm glad that I was able to help him. He thanked me and then I resumed Office. I told Mom that I had had to stop my prayers for a veteran looking for his veteran father's grave, and that I was sure she would understand.
At that point I felt an amazing warmth in my heart. I knew that Mom would have been proud to help a soldier, any soldier, and a veteran, any veteran. And I count it a real blessing that it was during Mom's favorite Psalm ... the one she especially asked to be said at her funeral ... Psalm 121, the first in the Psalter for EP of the Office for the Dead ... during this Psalm that God granted her, and me, the privilege of helping in a very small way this man whose service to our country means so much to me, and to my Mother.
St Martin de Tours, pray for us.
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