The Man Who Offered to Carry My Prayer

Every Wednesday morning, the women in my parish’s enrichment group pass around a notebook. One by one, we write down the intentions we want the others to carry into prayer during the coming week.

At that time, I seemed to be writing the same name again and again: my son’s.

It felt as though every time he and his family got their footing, something else went wrong. That Wednesday morning was no different. When the notebook reached me, once again I wrote down my son’s name.

I had no idea that before the day was over, I would witness two acts of kindness that would teach me something about what it means not only to give, but also to receive.

When Someone Else Becomes the Giver

My son and his family were facing an urgent financial need. A generous couple learned about the situation and stepped in to help.

Watching someone else provide what I wished I could provide stirred something complicated in me. I was profoundly grateful, but receiving that kindness required humility too. As a mother, I wanted to be the one who could make things better. Instead, I had to accept that sometimes God allows another person to become the giver.

Perhaps receiving is its own kind of surrender.

As Christians, we talk often about our responsibility to give—to feed the hungry, comfort the sorrowful, care for those in need, pray for others, and practice the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. But for those works of mercy to take place, someone must also be willing to receive them.

That day, my family was on the receiving end.

Later that same afternoon, I experienced kindness again, but this time in a very different way.

The Stranger in the Adoration Chapel

I entered the Adoration Chapel quietly and immediately noticed an older gentleman sitting in one of the four easy chairs facing the tabernacle. I had seen him there only a couple of times before. I didn’t really know him.

I approached the tabernacle and knelt on one of the two cushioned kneelers in front of it.

My prayer during Adoration usually begins with thanksgiving. I thank God for the blessings He has bestowed upon my family and me, and especially for Christ’s sacrifice and mercy. Then I bring Him my petitions before trying, sometimes imperfectly, to surrender those petitions to His Most Holy Will.

That afternoon, I prayed as I normally did.

When I finished, I stood, turned around, and took a seat.

The older gentleman was still there.

Then this man, whom I barely knew, leaned toward me.

“I’d like to pray for your special intention, if you’re okay with that,” he said, or words very close to those.

I was surprised by his offer.

“Yes, that would be very nice. Could you pray for my son and his family?”

“I’d be happy to. What’s his name?”

I told him.

There was something about that simple exchange that touched me deeply. Time before the Blessed Sacrament is precious, and here was someone willing to use part of his time to pray specifically for my son and his family—a man who knew neither my son nor me.

I asked his name and told him I would pray for his intentions too.

It was a simple exchange. He would carry my prayer. I would carry his.

I thought that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.

A Familiar Stranger

A few days later, a Saint of the Day email appeared in my inbox. When I saw the saint’s image, I stopped.

He reminded me so much of the man from the chapel.

For just a moment, my imagination took off.

Could that man have been an angel? A saint? Had God sent someone to me?

Eventually, I mentioned the encounter to a friend and asked whether she had ever heard of the man. I gave her his name.

Her eyes widened.

“Yes, sort of. Why?”

The expression on her face surprised me almost as much as her answer.

I told her what had happened in the Adoration Chapel—how this man I barely knew had offered to pray for my son and his family.

Her surprise grew.

The same thing had happened to her.

This same gentleman had approached my friend in the chapel and offered to pray for her intentions too.

Then came an irony I couldn’t overlook.

The friend standing in front of me was one half of the very couple who had helped my son and his family with their urgent financial need.

In the course of just a few days, kindness had traveled in a circle.

She and her husband had helped carry my son’s burden. This stranger had offered to carry mine. And I had offered to carry his intentions in prayer.

Still curious about our mysterious gentleman, my friend eventually asked our pastor whether he knew him.

Father did.

Our possible heavenly visitor was, in fact, a living, breathing human being.

Perhaps that made what happened even more beautiful.

Putting On Kindness

St. Paul tells the Colossians:

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” — Colossians 3:12

That Wednesday, kindness wasn’t an abstract Christian virtue. I watched it move from one person to another.

The Church gives us the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy as concrete expressions of Christ’s command to love our neighbor. We feed, shelter, comfort, counsel, forgive, and pray. Sacred Tradition has preserved and handed on this lived understanding of the Gospel throughout the centuries: our love for God cannot remain merely something we profess. It must become something we do.

Sometimes that means giving someone what they need.

Sometimes it means praying for a person we hardly know.

And sometimes it means humbling ourselves enough to receive what another person offers.

I never encountered that gentleman in the Adoration Chapel again. But I have often thought about what he taught me without ever intending to teach me anything.

He didn’t perform some extraordinary feat. He didn’t solve my problems. He simply noticed another person and offered what he had to give: his prayer.

Maybe that is why, for one fleeting moment, I wondered whether he might have been an angel.

Not because the man himself was an angel, but because his kindness pointed beyond himself—to the God who had placed us in one another's path.

I began that Wednesday by writing my son’s name in a notebook, asking other people to help me carry an intention that was weighing heavily on my heart.

Before the day was over, someone helped carry my son’s burden. A stranger offered to carry mine. And I, in turn, promised to carry his.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet ways God cares for us: He gives us one another.

We give.

We receive.

And then, by grace, we give again.