It is possible for a wife and mother to lead an extraordinary life, achieving heroism and greatness.
Ruth Pakaluk converted to Catholicism while at Harvard. She married her college sweetheart and joyfully welcomed seven children into the world.
Ruth became a renowned pro-life leader and brilliant debater. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and died at the young age of forty-one.
“I seem to be coming (at last) to the end of the rope. Over the past month, my lungs have gotten so bad that I cannot even walk across the room without having to sit down and catch my breath as a result. My liver has begun enlarging because of tumors. It’s uncomfortable, but not (yet) downright painful. Lucky for me, I am still getting by on nothing stronger than ibuprofen.”
From a letter to Laura Garcia, September 10, 1998
July 1998: Ruth with husband Michael on the doorstep of 17 Beechmont Street, where she died surrounded by family and friends just two months later, on September 23, 1998.
“In a lovely September in New England, Ruthie Pakaluk, with her family and friends round her, gently slipped away and succumbed, at the age of 41, to the breast cancer that had hovered, with its peril, over several years. At the onset of her cancer, in her late 30s, she was at the beginning of a pregnancy. But she did not choose at that moment to diminish the peril for herself by “ending” the pregnancy. She brought her last child, Sophie, to birth, and in the most remarkable flourish, she continued— with no apparent loss of momentum— in the joyous project of raising six children and serving as president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life. In everything she touched, she imparted the sense of a quick, acute mind, tempered with a philosophic reflection, and yet modulated, leavened, with a certain piety and humility.
[…]
She etched her biography by nurturing that new life, and no one, seeing Sophie, age five, could doubt the wisdom of her decision—or Ruth’s courage in bringing Sophie through.”
From an essay by Hadley Arkes , “Life Watch: Ruth and Michael—A Love Story”
(Crisis Magazine, February 1999)
Get to know Ruth
In 2011, Ruth’s widowed husband Michael published The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God (Ignatius Press), a collection of Ruth’s letters and talks, as well as a brief biography of her life.
Prayer for the Intercession of Ruth Pakaluk
Prayer for Private Devotion
Heavenly Father,
You inspired your daughter Ruth
to seek holiness as a wife, mother, and homemaker
and through an ardent apostolate
of friendship, catechesis and defense of human life,
perfecting her love through suffering in union with your Son.
Help me, like her, in the midst of my ordinary duties,
to fulfill with zeal the vocation you have given to me,
and, inspired by her trust in your providence,
grant, through her intercession,
the grace I now implore [here make your petition]
in the hope that she will be numbered among your saints.
Through Christ our Lord.
Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory Be.
In conformity with the decrees of Pope Urban VIII, we declare that there is no intention of anticipating in any way the judgment of the Church, and that this prayer is not intended for public use.