Today January 18

Today is the feast of Mary Ann Long (nice name!) (1946 - 1959), pro-life hero and cancer victim. Though she suffered a painful, disfiguring, expensive disease, she inspired joy in all who came in contact with her and died at age 12 in complete security. Over and over in her last days she said, "Dear Jesus, I love You." And when a self-styled faith healer said to her, "The Lord Jesus can heal you, Mary Ann," she said these last words: "I know Jesus can heal me. I know He can do anything. It doesn't make a bit of difference whether He heals me or not. That's His business." What faith! This little girl reminds me an awful lot of the plucky, innocent hero Lucy in C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia" series, she who was most privileged to see the mighty Aslan.

Mary Ann was one of four children from a poor Kentucky family. After she lost an eye to cancer, Mary Ann, whose mother herself was too ill to care for the child, was sent to a home run by the Dominican sisters in Atlanta.

Mary Ann wasn't Catholic and Sister Veronica worried she would be scared of the nuns in their strange long habits. But Mary Ann ran to her and hugged her as soon as she met her. Though she was small for her age and disfigured, her one eye sparkled with life and her round face was full of innocence and trust.

She didn't show any signs of homesickness but instead made the rounds of the ward and would just climb up into the bed of a patient who looked sad and lonely. She would just look at them and stroke their hand. She became a huge consolation to patients all her short life.

Although her parents were "nothing" (not religiously affiliated), they asked the sisters to baptize Mary Ann. All the patients wanted to joyfully celebrate the ceremony. Mostly adults, the cancer patients all loved the simple little girl. One Methodist woman gave her a white nightgown; a Baptist patient made it into a Baptismal dress for Mary Ann.

Mary Ann learned quickly, and responded spontaneously with a generous soul. When one of the sisters lifted her up to see the Stations of the Cross when she was teaching her them, Mary Ann said, "Oh, poor Jesus." And her prayer was "Jesus I love You with all my got." She added her own prayers to the rote, formal prayers she was taught.

She was only four years old but she desired First Communion. The sisters slowly tried to teach her about the examination of conscience. She seems to have understood the "zamination," since when recalling some self-willed naughtiness, she spontaneously said, "I'm sorry, Baby Jesus." She was allowed to make her First Communion at age 5 and to be confirmed at age 6.

She tried a couple of times to live back at home, but it didn't work out. For one thing, her family just weren't able to make her as happy as the nuns at the home were; and for another, the local kids teased her and made fun of her deformity. Back at the home, a retreat master from the nearby Trappist monastery asked her if she'd like to help those ignorant kids who had teased and hurt her. When she said she did, he told her to offer up all her sufferings and frustrations to Baby Jesus and He would help them. She took it to heart and never forgot it.

Though she expressed a desire to be a nun, when her sister Sue, who also followed her into the Catholic Church, would sneak off to the chapel to pray while Mary Ann was visiting patients, she said, "All I say is if all Sue wants to do is go to chapel and pray, she just better join another order . . . We work!"

She would brush some incapacitated patients' hair and bring them water. One lady whose husband had left her when he found out she had incurable cancer responded to Mary Ann's loving, spontaneous desire to be her "nurse" and just before her death returned to the Church she'd left long ago. "Now I know why I came all the way from Kentucky," the woman said. "Years ago I was Catholic. I've wanted to come back for a long time and didn't know how."

One special patient of Mary Ann's was a little baby with inoperable cancer. The parents, of whom this was their seventh child, were reluctant to leave her at the home, but seeing Mary Ann embrace her, they relaxed. The mother's doctor and others had told her the baby was useless and the kindest thing would be to let her die. But the mom said, "Stephanie was needed; she wasn't useless; this child with a bandaged face and a heart full of love needed her. My whole attitude changed and as the months passed and we came back to see Stephanie the hurt healed and was replaced with a quiet joyful gratitude for her. Not only did she bring happiness to Mary Ann, but she brought it to all in the home."

Mary Ann died a year later in the home, a rosary in her hand. Mary Ann Long, pray for us.