A friend told me once about his most precious possession.

His father, a Serbian immigrant, worked as a mechanic in a steel mill on the Ohio river. When he cleaned up after work, he was never able to get the machine oil completely off his hands.

My friend's most precious possession was his father's Slavonic prayer book: he told me that every single page of the book was smudged with his father's oily fingerprints. Turning the pages opened a window into his father's prayer life, something he never spoke about.

I like to imagine that the prayers of the faithful can come to imbue objects like this prayer book. We know that this can happen with the saints, whose relics are saturated with their holiness. Can this happen to a smaller degree with the rest of us?


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An aside: My friend grew up in  Mingo Junction, OH, which was used to film a few scenes in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. The movie gives a good picture of the Slavic Orthodox immigrant world that gathered around this country's coal mines and steel mills early in the 20th century. Sadly, it does nothing to portray the faith of any of its characters, beyond their attendance at church for weddings and funerals. A lost opportunity.

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IC XC NIKA