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A Thought on Sunday
From the desk of Fr. Ignatius, c.p.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The Two Marys!
A few days ago, I visited two Marys in St. James’ Hospital, Mary Quinn from Derravarragh Road and Mary McAndrew from Shanid Road.
They were in different wards, they don’t know each other, but both are about 89 years of age and both were shining with joy at the prospect of going home - not to their eternal home but to their earthly temporary homes on Derravarragh Road and Shanid Road. Their youthful spirits were shining through bodies battered by age and sickness.
St. Paul says that even though our poor bodies may be falling apart, our inner selves are renewed day by day. And this is not just sweet-talk, you can see it in people like these two Marys! It’s as if we become young again, become like children again, before going home to God.
We need hospitals for our bodily wear and tear and we need some similar place for the healing of our spiritual ills. Many suffer bodily blindness but many more suffer from what can truly be called spiritual blindness. And of course because we’re blind we don’t see it. That’s why Jesus and the gospels focus so much on this kind of spiritual blindness.
There was once a blind girl who hated herself because she was blind. And hating herself, she hated everyone except her loving boyfriend. He was always there for her. He always stood by her. She told him, “If only I could see, I would marry you.”
One day, someone donated a pair of eyes and when her bandages came off, she was able to see everything, including her boyfriend. He lost no time in asking her, “Now that you can see, will you marry me?”
The girl looked at him and saw to her surprise that he too was blind. And the thought of looking at those blind eyes for the rest of her life shocked her so much that she refused to marry him. He left in tears and some time later had a note sent to her saying, “Take good care of those eyes because before they were yours, they were mine!”
Awful, isn’t it?
But we are like this. When our situation or our status changes, we can forget so easily those who stood by us in the difficult times. We’re more blind than we were before. It’s also true that people who go blind often see things more clearly than they ever did when they had bodily sight.
Jesus was always going to lonely places to pray and to face this kind of spiritual blindness, to confront the demons that we’re not aware of but that rule and control our lives: the compulsion to always be right, the compulsion to be a success or to be powerful and in control and many more.
We don’t like going to this lonely place, we don’t like the self we discover, and we don’t like to see how blind we’ve been all the time. But so great to leave that spiritual hospital and come home to our true selves, no denying any more, no pretending to be something that we’re not, free with the freedom Jesus promised us and young with the inner glow I saw in the two Marys heading home!
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