What is the best way to thank Jesus? xxx

[Nelka]

I am a care worker and there is a woman that I care for who has a low functioning mental capacity, she is like a 3 or 4 year old child. I have more responsibility for her than my colleagues and I thought what would happen to her when she dies (in the future).

If she hadn’t been baptised she couldn’t enter Heaven but she cannot sin due to her mental capacity. Her parents visit once per year, maybe and they don’t communicate with the home.

I wanted to baptise her but know I am not allowed (unless in an emergency) so I prayed about this, I asked Jesus if I could just find out somehow if she was baptised or if there was a rule allowing me.

Out of the blue her dad wanted to visit, he wasn’t there long but said he and her mother wanted her to visit the following week (this hadn’t happened for many years and then they were cancelled at the last minute).

When I took her to see her parents I found it very easy to talk to her mother and mentioned that she used to sit in church as a small child, I didn’t start that conversation but I did ask at that moment if she had been baptised and the mother said yes.

I know that Jesus answered my prayer, I feel ashamed though that I do not do enough for Him.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Simply thank him sincerely for answering your prayer.

Perhaps say a longer prayer of thanksgiving to him when you have time - whatever long form of prayer you like best, whether it’s reading Scripture for a half hour, or saying Liturgy of the Hours, or rosary, etc.
Or sit with him in Adoration. He likes to have people keep him company.

I know how you feel, I often cry because I don’t feel capable of properly making it up to God for all the prayers he has answered and all the times he has been there for me. I think of Jesus being sad in the Garden of Gethsemane (which, since I actually got to see the Garden of Gethsemane in person recently, I can picture very well) and it just makes me so sad. We have to just do what we can do. I can’t turn the clock back and become a nun or anything now, and I don’t think that would have worked out very well if I’d done it in the first place.

“Day by Day”, which was a big radio hit when I was a little girl is a good song for when you want to do more for God. Ignore the silly hippie outfits. St. Richard of Chichester, an English bishop from the 1200s, actually wrote the lyrics. So I think of him instead.