Prayers

A prayer to love people with autism

“Unconditional Love”

Dear Lord, your Holy Mother and Saint Joseph, you took others

Into your family life as and when you were the Holy Family,

Taking others who were understood to be your own, as Joseph

Was understood to be the father of Jesus, and so we ask, even

Now, that you take our autistic children, whether young or as

They grow and get older still, so that they may be planted in your Holy Family and watered with the Holy Spirit, under your saving Care, the watchful eye of Joseph, and your mother’s maternal, Ground swelling gift of gathering love, which unfolds an ever Opening embrace of people coming into the heart of your Church.

So we pray, dear Lord, that the guardian angels who exist now,

Both visible and invisible, whether parents, grandparents, brothers

Or sisters will, like a lively electric current, induce the desire to

Pray in those who may know you in some secret way, seeking a

Way out into the daylight of consciousness and contemplation.

Dear Mary, we do not know how your extended family grew,

But now it grows in the Church and we would love those close

To us to be close to you, so when we lie awake, troubled over

The future, the possibility of our death and our absence from

Their lives, that in our turn to hope in you that you will help.

Dear Joseph, foster-father and patron saint of all foster-fathers,

Help all those calling out to us to be loved, to be understood in

Ways too silent for words, like a smile, like a hug, like the gift

Of a gift of a flower, of an almost picture, poem, heartfelt and true

And all those unfinished beautiful gestures that speak simply:

I love you.

Dear Lord, now you and I, they and us seem to be so often veiled

From one another, too hidden and in a way too open to be left alone,

And so let labels peel and curl and drop off, except in so far as they

Help with getting the help that is needed, but otherwise let the Paperwork be pedalled to the bin and stay there, lest Harry, Martha,

James, Sibyl, or people with names become namelessly labelled.

Let there, Lord, be a better understanding of who each person is and That God does not have favourites and that we will awake from the bludgeoning that there are less and more important lives, some to let Live and some to let die, and we will see, if you help, that each of us

Has an imperishable dignity, given freely, from our very beginning.

Dear Holy Spirit, your invisible presence is everywhere, within all

Of us, making sense of our lives and helping us to navigate the inner

Path of hidden lives and how to help them turn outward to others.

You alone know the intimate cause and causes of what comes to Exist in our inner development and how it can be helped, even as we See the early signs of repetitious actions imprisoning a child’s life.

Dear Holy Family of the Church, just as I have held a child’s hand

And brought them to you, just as others have held my hand and Brought me to you, so be ready to hold the hands of those I am

Holding ready, like floating lilies, to unfold their beauty and talents

And take their place in a sheltered place, fostering their future and

Hoping against hope that there will always be an angel, visible or

Invisible, to guide the gift of these children, of these people, who

Ring out with the individuality you have given, shining out with

The unique dignity that each one of us has received and which is,

As it were, imperishable, so we may hear the echo of the beginning,

That each one of us is made in the image and likeness of God!

Let us hope, with a heavenly and indestructible hope, that whether

We or they go first into that impossibly, unimaginably blessed

Dwelling, that we will be there, that they will be there, that we will

Be there together with you and the untold numbers of all who love.

by Francis Etheredge, Catholic married layman, father of 11, 3 of whom are in heaven, and an author. Just published: “