"The Comfort of Those Little Cherished Prayer Books"

Cherished mini memories...

Little aged, fragile, egg shell ladies arrive early to find their special place in the row of pews leading to the altar. It's always best to arrive before the crowd where someone might scurry by as through they see no one.

Dressed respectably, there will be no dainty, ironed kerchief atop their gray to white hair. Hats, demure and unassuming is the order of the day. They arrive early not only for sanctuary, but to open up their purse and pull out their prayer book.

Long, spindly, well manicured hands now cover the scars of many jobs and the many years of motherhood. Washboard hands that no manicure could possibly disguise, she pulls out a tiny, leather bound prayer book. The book is no bigger than two and a half inches wide by three and three quarters long. The two hundred sixteen, gold leaf pages are locked together with a delicately decorated but very functional metal clasp.

With the handles of her purse wrapped around her forearm, her arthritic fingers deftly dances through the delicate, gold rimmed pages searching the Table of Contents for the section "Prayers Before Mass."

She always misplaces it.

There it is somewhere between the Table of Feasts, Fasts and Abstinence Days and the Morning Prayers.

Just in Time before the Mass...

"Oh merciful Father, who didst love the world so as to give up for our redemption Thy beloved Son"...

She finishes all the prayers needed to prepare for Mass and just in the nick of time.

Throughout the service, her hands caress the tiny missal almost hovering over it, protecting it, turning each exquisite china cup page as if it was the actual word of God.

All the world, at least until after the "low Mass" Salve Regina is recited, is at peace. Until the next time...

I remember those days. I remember those ladies. I remember those tiny books of yesteryear.

I once had a small white prayer book that, like my sister's, was received at my First Holy Communion. We all wore white on that day, but my outfit had a few donut stains from giving into temptation from the very onset.

I trust with all the varied prayers being recited out from these tiny manuals over the years by many tiny church gong ladies, that I've somehow been absolved!

These beautiful three prayer books, imprimatur in 1896, and in 1925, are a treasure. They truly are from another time and another world. I do not know which family the two came from as I found them in a small cardboard jewelry box along with my older sister's book. Apparently, she made her first communion in April, 1955 to receive her very first "Manual of Prayers and Instruction!"

1955... that's a long time to be a Catholic!

Copyright 2021/ Ben Bensen III