As I write, my wife and I are spending a week on Ocracoke Island. Ocracoke, part of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, can only be reached by ferry. It is a quiet place of wind and waves, sand, small scrub forests, and friendly people—who like to take time—who like to engage in conversation. Best of all, there is not much to do, which is why we came to rest, to not have to do anything.
However, there is a lighthouse. Built in 1823, it is the second oldest working lighthouse in the United States. It is handsome, sturdy brick painted white, and relatively short: 75 feet. Unlike the lighthouses further up the coast, which warn ships to stay far out to sea, away from the Graveyard of the Atlantic, Ocracoke lighthouse welcomes and guides ships into the oldest navigable inlet in our state.
Originally, in order to provide a sufficient beacon, the lighthouse needed eight to ten large oil flames augmented by a complex system of reflectors. But in 1854, Fresnel lenses were installed. Invented by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1827), the lenses dramatically magnify the power of light so that a single oil lamp could provide more light than ten. Adrienne Bernhard of the BBC referred to the Fresnel lens, perhaps a bit dramatically, as “the invention that saved a million ships.”
The park ranger talking to us takes a small package out of her pocket. “Now,” she says, “the light is provided by this.” She holds up a narrow 250-watt bulb, smaller than my pinky finger. With the Fresnel lenses, this bulb produces an eight thousand candlepower beacon that can be seen fourteen miles out to sea.
Later that night, I lay in bed praying. We are in a second-floor apartment with the balcony door open. It is a pleasantly cool night, moonlit, with a soft breeze blowing. The lights are off. My wife is quietly sleeping beside me.
I come to the petitions for those in need. I pray for our friend in Wisconsin who is suffering from Lyme disease and for his patient, loving wife. I pray for a beloved colleague at work whose wife has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I pray for a close relative living with a mental illness and for her husband struggling with alcoholism. I pray for a twelve-year-old boy who touched a downed electric cable, lost a hand, and is covered with burns. I pray for our daughters, our granddaughter, my sister, and so many more.
But, as I pray, my prayers feel so inadequate. Not only inadequate to address the problems and people I pray for, but inadequate in their reach. I pray for my friend to be healed of Lyme disease, but what of all the millions of people who need to be healed? I pray for those known to me who are addicted, suffering, or simply lost, but what of all the millions of other people who are addicted, suffering, or lost? We live in a society of lost sheep, of sheep who cannot see their shepherd (though He reaches out to them with love). What are my prayers in this vast night of seemingly endless need?
As frequently happens, I begin to drift off to a sleep filled with the question, the vast dark night, and my sense of futility.
Then God shows me a beacon. He lets me see a Fresnel lens.
Above us, beside us, around us is the communion of saints. Mary, the angels, and archangels, all the souls in heaven. More powerful than a Fresnel lens, they can take my little 250-watt prayer – hardly bright enough to light the corner of a room – and magnify it a thousandfold, transform it into a brilliant beacon that shines fourteen miles out into the vastness. Together with my little light, the little prayer lights of all who pray, magnified by the communion of saints, send beacons out throughout the earth and into the depths of purgatory.
The communion of saints— the invention that saved not a million, but billions of souls.
Copyright 2022 Arthur Powers
Arthur Powers
Arthur Powers went to Brazil in 1969 as a Peace Corps Volunteer and lived there for over thirty years. He & his wife spent seven years in the Amazon as Franciscan lay missioners. They now live in Raleigh, where Arthur is a deacon. Arthur, a co-founder of CWG, is author of two collections of short stories set in Brazil, two volumes of poetry, and The Book of Jotham.
Lovely, Arthur. Thanks.