The Catholic widow at prayer, night and day

I“Honour widows”

St Paul’s instruction to Timothy is short and steady. It begins with honour and ends with prayer:

The same chapter tells the faithful to provide for the widows in their own families, so that the Church can care for those who have no one (5:16). St James defines pure religion as visiting “the fatherless and widows in their tribulation” (James 1:27). The Catholic Encyclopedia records that the Apostles collected alms for widows and gave their care to the first deacons (Acts 6:1), and the Catechism (no. 1537) notes that the name ordo, an order, belongs not only to bishops, priests and deacons but also to other groups: catechumens, virgins, spouses and widows. You are not on the edge of the Church. You were always near its centre.

Scripture is full of widows God noticed: Anna the prophetess, widowed after seven years of marriage and a widow “until fourscore and four years,” who “departed not from the temple, by fastings and prayers serving night and day” and was there to meet the infant Christ (Luke 2:37); the poor widow whose two mites Our Lord said were more than all the rich gave (Mark 12:42–44); the widow of Naim, whose son He raised. Of her, St Luke writes simply: “Whom when the Lord had seen, being moved with mercy towards her, he said to her: Weep not” (Luke 7:13, Douay-Rheims).

IIGrief is not a failure of faith

Christ’s “Weep not” at Naim was not a rebuke. It was the word of someone about to act. He was moved before He spoke. Your tears are not evidence that you lack faith; they are evidence that you loved, and God takes them seriously. The Psalms say He “will support the fatherless and the widow” (Psalm 145:9, Douay-Rheims; Psalm 146 in modern Bibles) and call Him “the father of orphans, and the judge of widows” (Psalm 67:6; Psalm 68). In Scripture, the judge of widows is their defender.

Give yourself time. There is no deadline on grief and no prize for hurrying it. If the darkness becomes despair, or you find yourself thinking of ending your life, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any hour, and tell your priest.

IIIPraying for your husband

Death has ended the bond of your marriage (1 Corinthians 7:39), but it has not ended your love’s work for him. The Catechism (no. 1032) teaches that the Church has prayed for the dead since her first days, above all by offering the Mass for them, so that they may be made clean and come to see God; she also urges alms, indulgences and penance offered on their behalf. And it adds a consolation in no. 958: “Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.”

So you pray for him, and you may ask his prayers for you. You do not presume, and you do not despair; you hope, and entrust him to the mercy of God. Ask your parish to have Mass offered for him, on his anniversary and whenever you can. Say his name at the altar.

When you pray for one person you may say “give unto him” and “may he rest in peace.” The Catholic Encyclopedia records an old Italian custom of praying Psalm 129 [130], the De profundis, for the holy souls after the evening Angelus. It suits a widow’s evening:

IVTwo widows who became saints

St Jane Frances de Chantal (1572–1641) married the Baron de Chantal in 1592 and ran a household on the brink of ruin back to order. In 1601 he was accidentally killed while out shooting, and she was left a widow at twenty-eight with four children. For seven years she lived, for her children’s sake, in the house of a difficult father-in-law, and bore it patiently. In her grief she begged God for a guide, and in Lent of 1604 she found one in St Francis de Sales. In 1610, at Annecy, the two founded the Visitation, a religious congregation meant for young women and widows who lacked the strength for the austere orders of the day. When she died there were eighty-six houses. The Church keeps her memorial on 12 August.

St Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821) was a New York Episcopalian who married William Seton in 1794 and bore him five children. His business failed, he fell ill with tuberculosis, and she sailed with him and their eldest daughter to Italy in the hope that warm weather would help him. He died soon after they landed, and she was a widow at twenty-nine in a foreign country. The Filicchi family, Catholic friends in Livorno, took her in, and their faith drew her home: she was received into the Catholic Church in 1805, at real cost. In 1809, at Emmitsburg, Maryland, she founded the Sisters of Charity of St Joseph, the first congregation of religious sisters begun in the United States, and opened a free school for poor girls. Her last words to her sisters, in 1821, were “Be children of the Church.” St Paul VI canonized her in 1975, the first saint born in the United States, and honoured her as “a wife, a mother, a widow, and a religious.” Her feast is 4 January.

Neither woman stopped being a mother. Both let grief become a door rather than a wall.

VA rule of prayer for a widow

• Begin the day by giving it. The Sign of the Cross and the Morning Offering, however the night went.
• Keep his place in your prayer. The Eternal Rest at meals or at night; his name at every Mass you attend.
• Let the night be prayer. Anna prayed “night and day.” The sleepless hours that come with grief can hold the De profundis, a decade of the Rosary, or simply his name and Christ’s.
• Let yourself be helped. St Paul made the care of widows the Church’s duty. Accepting it is not weakness; it lets others keep the Gospel.
• When you are ready, serve. The widows St Paul honoured had brought up children, given hospitality, “washed the saints’ feet,” and “ministered to them that suffer tribulation” (1 Timothy 5:10). Your experience of loss will one day be someone else’s comfort.
• You need not decide your future now. St Paul says a widow “is at liberty: let her marry to whom she will; only in the Lord,” and that she will be more blessed, in his counsel, if she remains as she is (1 Corinthians 7:39–40). Both roads are honourable. Neither has to be chosen in the first year.

The 1888 Manual of Prayers, prepared by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, gives prayers for mourners and a prayer “For a Man deceased.” You will find both kinds in our Prayer Book: A Widow’s Prayer, which the Manual places among its prayers for mourners and which we give to widows, and the Prayer for a Husband Who Has Died. We add this one, composed for 1765 Regina and labelled as such. Add his name where it is marked.

The Covenant tool has a path for widows that keeps your husband’s anniversary and your prayers for him, and the Prayer Journal holds his name among your intentions, kept on your own device unless you choose to sync.