Country Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

comfort and they lined up for the blessing of the sick – people for whom wheelchairs, crutches and walking aids are part of their way of life. They came not for miracle cures, but for spiritual strength and stamina; and because they find it here, they come back again and again. Broken people find God because they need him.
    I went into the then empty basilica and looked around this huge stadium that Monsignor Horan built to shelter his visiting flock. As I sat there a family came in. In a wheelchair sat a waxen-faced, hunch-backed, middle-aged lady whose wasted legs dangled on to the support at the front of the chair. Her faded blonde hair was wound around her head in an old-fashioned braid and it framed her shrunken face like a halo. She was pushed along byan overweight sister who wore a blue crimplene dress that was too short and too tight. Wisps of grey hair framed a red face that had never seen the inside of a beauty parlour. She was a bigger and healthier copy of her sister. Her husband, a pot-bellied, balding man with braces, led a beautiful wide-eyed little boy by the hand. The child embodied the finer points of the adults and was probably the miraculous product of a late marriage. There was about them a harmony of movement, as if they were moulded together by the same thought process. They came to the front of the altar, where a satin-robed Our Lady with outstretched hands smiled down on them. Around her feet were bunches of many-coloured roses that cascaded on to the floor. The family gathered in a semi-circle around the statue and stood wordlessly looking up at her. This was the reason for their visit. Then the mother reached forward, picked a rose and handed it to the lady in the wheelchair. She took it with her twisted fingers and smiled wistfully at the rose while the others looked on. No words were spoken but the three of them were like a bodyguard around her, and then the little boy reached up and touched her face with his small brown fingers. It was an expression of gentle love. As they left the basilica there was no sound but the swish of the wheelchair. They were a solid unit with a calm unquestioning acceptance of their wheelchair burden. This was the private face of Knock. It is for such as these, the unsophisticated and often very courageouspeople, who sometimes struggle silently under heavy burdens and fight isolated battles against poverty and emigration, that Knock provides a corner of spiritual sustenance.
    Later that evening another face of Knock emerged as I watched a middle-aged, well-married couple walk slowly outside around the old chapel saying the rosary. The swaying beads knocked off their knees as she gave out the decades and he answered. They walked slowly, completely intent on their mission, with no children to hinder their concentration. The children had probably been farmed out to the neighbours for the day or else were busy stuffing themselves in one of the many shops. But there could be no doubt but that there were children somewhere, as the couple had that battered look that can only be derived from rearing children on a limited income. She wore a good suit that had been fashionable a few years earlier and was now revived by a new blouse and her shoes that had seen her through a few summers still looked good because she was the kind of woman who would look after her clothes well. The husband was an example of her good housekeeping, well scrubbed and washed to within an inch of his life. He had the appearance of a solid, easy-going, hard-working man, satisfied with his lot, including his well-meaning, managing wife. Theirs could have been a journey of thanksgiving or petition, but whatever way the wind was blowing they were giving it their all. This was the ordinary face ofKnock.
    It is the holy water women who give Knock its colour. They rattle off their prayers to Our Lady because she is as familiar to them as one of their neighbours, they are in such regular communication with her.