Guest blogger Caitlin O’Rourke is a member of St Bridget’s, Church, High Dudgeon, New Jersey. Caitlin is ten years old.
See when Grandma died she had this very old Infant of Prague which she said I could have because she knew I liked it and nobody else wanted it and so after the funeral when Mommy and Aunt Anne went in to clear out Grandma’s house they were going to give the Infant to the nuns, but I told them that Grandma said I could have it and she did too so they gave it to me and I didn’t know it but Grandma had a whole box full of clothes for baby Jesus and even one for Christmas which is red velvet and has white ermine fur on it that Flora said was just rabbit and I don’t care if it is just rabbit because it is very nice and the velvet robe has real jewels on the edge and there is one for Easter too which has silver thread and yellow broidered flowers and lilies and they are all very old because Grandma got the Infant of Prague from her mother who was from Germany and I have Jesus in my room because Uncle Ned helped me make a shelf for him to stand on and I love him very much I mean baby Jesus I like Uncle Ned too but he smells bad sometimes and Aunt Anna says he should do something about the hairs in his nostrils and that he should not smoke so much because it gives you yellow fingernails and bad breath and anyway Flora told me that her Grandfather told her that if you put money under the Infant of Prague you will always be rich and I really didn’t believe her but then I got twenty dollars for my birthday from Cousin Mitchell and so I said a prayer and folded it and put it under the Infant of Prague and you will never believe it but the next week Mom sold my old bike at a garage sale and made fifty dollars and she gave me half of it so it is true that if you put money under the Infant of Prague you will get rich and so I put twenty more dollars under the infant and you’ll never believe it but two weeks later when I was sitting in church I opened the hymnbook and there was five dollars in there so I took that money and put it under baby Jesus but it was too much so I got a little wooden chest that I got for my birthday and put the money in that and put the infant on top of the whole thing and you’ll never believe it but the next Friday I won ten dollars at parish Bingo and so I put that under the Infant of Prague and I was so happy that I told Tracy Watkins who is a Methodist who goes to our school and Grandma always said Methodists were just Baptists who could read and I know it’s not very nice but it always made Aunt Anna laugh her head off and when she does she snorts backwards and makes a funny moose sound and anyway Tracy Watkins said it was all nonsense and told Jimmy Pochowski and you’ll never believe it but everyone came to my house for Flora’s surprise birthday party and we were eating cake and playing musical chairs and then I went up to my room to get another chair and I you’ll never believe it but somebody stole all the money from under the Infant of Prague and when I came downstairs Jimmy Pochowski looked like a cat that had just eaten the kitten and I was so mad that I hit him over the head with the chair sort of but I missed but anyway he ran out the door and said a bad word about me and called me Fatty Catty and then it gets worse because when I went back upstairs I saw that it was just that someone had taken the box down and Tracy Watkins said she did it and she was only looking and all the money was there so later Dad said that it wasn’t a good idea to keep that money and maybe we should give some to the poor so I put all of it in the St Vincent de Paul collection last Sunday and he said I didn’t have to give all of it but I did and later when I was praying to the Infant of Prague I heard him say that now I was really rich as rich as he was and I don’t know what it means but when I told Mother she started to cry a little and gave me a hug she always does that when I say something about Jesus or Mary.
