Self-Offering to the Holy Spirit….

Holy Spirit, God of Love,
be present to me;
accept the offering of myself
which I make to you.
Receive these hands, these feet, these eyes,
this tongue, and all my senses.

Receive
my memory, my will, my understanding,
my desires, my sighs, the longings
and the aspirations of my soul.
Receive my every hour, my every moment,
and all the happenings of my life.

Holy Spirit, God of Love,
knit my soul to you.
Let your love possess my whole being
my senses, my powers, my affections,
my very life.

Let your love rule my labor and my rest,
my going and my staying,
and move me as it pleases.
Let your love disquiet or comfort me,
humble or exalt me,
and burn away all my faults.

Holy Spirit, God of Love,
draw me to yourself.
Do with me what you will.
Nothing will cause me fear
if only your love enfolds me.

Devotions to the Holy Spirit
Brian Moore, SJ
Copyright 1976, Brian Moore, SJ
Pauline Books and Media

My baby and me……

It’s Mother’s Day, and I thought I would share again one of my favorite posts about my son…written last summer, shortly before his wedding.

I just returned from dinner at the restaurant where he works, and my darling daughter-in-law joined us. She gave me a card, just from her, which expressed her happiness at being able to “officially” celebrate Mother’s Day with me as her “mom.” How that touched my heart!

She also gave me a lawn ornament bouquet of three beautiful metal sculpted hand painted flowers which an artist friend of hers created. They are so happy looking that they make me smile, and I chose a home for them in the garden where I can see them from my kitchen windows.

I love having a daughter…at last!

Hope all of the mom’s who read this had a most Happy Mother’s Day, filled with laughter and love. And for those who are still longing for a child, I prayed for you at Mass today…..because I have been there too.

Here is a picture of my son and me, before my FIRST Mother’s Day!

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  (Matthew 19:5)

I hear wedding bells….and feel the tug of heartstrings.  My son is getting married this Saturday.

I’ve known since January. Where have those six months flown?  It is only now that I am pondering deeply the enormous change our family is about to undergo. Even happy, exciting changes can still tug at your heartstrings. Letting go of the familiar, the comfortable…what has always been, can be a bit daunting.

Change by its nature is uncertain, at least in the beginning. We have to learn what to expect, how things will be; we forge new ways and assume different roles.

I have spent the past week looking through photo albums and childhood memorabilia to find memories of my son which will be shared in a video and collage at the wedding. I watched him grow up again through his pictures. My dining room table is piled with his beloved Garfield paraphernalia, stacks of music awards, and framed photos of pint sized athletes playing soccer, baseball and football.

I sat up late the other night watching a VHS tape of him playing My Funny Valentine on tenor saxophone in tenth grade…and then watching it again..and again.  His dad and I were so proud of him that night.  He was amazing!  Saturday, he will be surprised to hear this musical piece accompanying the video of childhood pictures of him and his bride.

The other day, my sister and I spent the afternoon shopping for items to decorate the groom’s table.  We had so much fun, and as I tried to choose things I thought he would like, and which would express something about him, I realized that decorating this table  might be the last time I would do something so exclusively for him… all by myself.  And so I chose my treasures carefully.

That same morning, I had listened to another mother describe her son’s recent wedding, and she had mentioned how the cleaving she had felt with him had to be loosened and let go, for now he must cleave to his wife, as God’s Word says.

Yes, it’s true.  My son’s bride, among mortals, must be first in his heart and in his thoughts and care, from this Saturday onward.  I must step back…no longer the first to respond when he is sick or has a problem.  His personal life will become their life.  I must respect a new privacy, one with no place for my sometimes unsolicited advice.

As the woman mentioned above said, “It is painful…this letting go.”

When a father brings his daughter to the altar to give her hand in marriage, we see a visual of this “giving away.”

But mothers are seated in the pew.  We watch in silence, as our sons take their wives, and the bond is untied slowly in secret within our hearts, where only God can see.

It can never truly be undone, truly severed…that bond, which in a mother is wrapped so tightly, each little knot a reminder of a precious moment in her child’s life.

But yet, it must be loosened now, and yield to the wedding ring she wears.

I can hear the song being played on my heartstrings….love him always, love him deeply, take care of him as I have, never hurt him… and one day, give him back to God.  Yes give him back to God shining with grace and beauty…much more so than when I gave him to you…

And, remember to cleave, only to him.

Tuesday adoration….why am I here?

Why did God create you?  Do you ever think about that?  I do.

Many years ago while on retreat, I wrote across the top of the first page of my journal:  Dear God, what is my purpose in life?  Who am I supposed to be?

I prayed all weekend for an answer, bringing my question continually before the Lord.  But I never heard an answer…and I was somewhat disappointed.

But, now years later, I realize that I didn’t hear the answer because I was listening for the wrong kind of answer.  I wanted something specific and concrete.  I wanted to leave my retreat with a plan…maybe even a list which I could check off.  Here is what God has sent me to do.  Here is how I will make a difference in the world.   I wanted a mission.

But as the years passed, and life moved on with its sorrows and its joys, I began to hear the answer I sought.  It is always the same, and it takes root deeper and deeper in my heart, and the joy it imparts is a reassuring certainty.

Today, I heard a young woman describe her very first visit to the Eucharistic Adoration chapel in her parish.

She went in, not knowing what to expect.  And to her amazement, she saw a type of vision…one which arose within her imagination.  She saw a large tree and beneath it she was seated with Jesus.  To her great surprise, Jesus carved His initials and hers in the tree, and then He drew a heart around it.

He looked at her so tenderly and told her, “You could never understand how very much I love you.  Fall in love with Me.  I so much want you to fall in love with Me.”

Then she went on to say that God  always knows just what we need to hear, and the way we need to hear it.

And, I understood.  So many times in the adoration chapel, I have had a similar “vision,” only in mine, I am a little girl, all dressed up with ribbons in her hair, and I am snuggled in the arms of Jesus, or sometimes standing on his lap, looking into His eyes, or hugging His neck so tight.  And….I am so very peaceful, both in the scene, and as I quietly sit there being loved.

Getting out of the car, after hearing the young woman’s encounter with Jesus, I looked up at the blue sky and the trees in their tender spring leaves.  I listened to the bird songs of some cardinals nearby.  I gazed at all of this and with wide-eyed wonder, marveled that the God Who had created it all, and Who sustains a world teeming with life and beauty, would so love me, and you….would so love us above all of His material creation combined.  Yet, I know that He does…because He told us so.

This is the answer I have been hearing for so long…in the quiet of the adoration chapel, in the writings of the mystics, in the longing of my heart which nothing on earth can fill.  The answer is the echo in the restlessness of my soul which yearns to be totally accepted, completely understood, unconditionally loved.  The answer is in my quest to rest in ravishing Beauty which will never fade, never end.

Yes, God answered my question on that retreat so long ago, but His answer was too wonderful, too beautiful, too perfect for me to hear at the time.  But He has repeated it over and over until at last I began to listen:

I created you so that I could love you.  And, I made you in My Own Image and Likeness so that your soul would be so beautiful in its resemblance of Me, that I would thirst for you to love Me in return.

It is really that simple.  We were created for Love. God is always loving us, always giving Himself to us, never turning His gaze from His beloved.  And we, at every moment, can be loving Him in return, whether in thought or deed or absence of malice.

And we can grow, moment by moment, in that love for Him…the more we forgive, the more we give, the more we  forget ourselves….always inviting Him to refine His Image more visibly within our souls.

O Jesus, what a glorious “mission!”  What a sublime purpose for my life….to be Your Heart’s desire!   Teach me to surrender myself to Your Love….and grant that I may love You in return by doing all that I can to imitate You.  Amen.

 ”Jesus make me resemble You…”  prayed St. Therese.

“For in reflecting upon it carefully, Sisters, we realize that the soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says He finds His delight.  So then, what do you think that abode will be like where a King so powerful, so wise, so pure, so full of all good things takes His delight?  I don’t find anything comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity.  Indeed, out intellects, however keen, can hardly comprehend it, just as they cannot comprehend God; but He Himself says that He created us in His own image and likeness.”

The Interior Castle, Study Edition: pp. 33-34, nos. 83-84.
St. Teresa of Avila
ICS Publications
Washington, DC

Eucharistic Miracle in Argentina

The following Eucharistic Miracle occurred in Buenos Aires when  Pope Francis was Auxiliary Bishop under Cardinal Quarracino:

Eucharistic Miracle in Buenos Aires

The weakening of faith in the real presence of the Risen Christ in the Eucharist is one of the most significant aspects of the current spiritual crisis. Jesus wants to strengthen our faith in His Eucharistic presence. That is why from time to time in the history of the Catholic Church He gives us signs–Eucharistic miracles that clearly underscore the fact that He, the Risen Lord Himself in the mystery of His Divinity and glorified humanity, is truly present in the Eucharist. The most recent Eucharistic miracle recognized by the Church authorities occurred in 1996 in the capital of Argentina–Buenos Aires.

A consecrated Host becomes flesh and blood

At seven o’clock in the evening on August 18, 1996, Fr. Alejandro Pezet was saying Holy Mass at a Catholic church in the commercial center of Buenos Aires. As he was finishing distributing Holy Communion, a woman came up to tell him that she had found a discarded host on a candleholder at the back of the church. On going to the spot indicated, Fr. Alejandro saw the defiled Host. Since he was unable to consume it, he placed it in a container of water and put it away in the tabernacle of the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

On Monday, August 26, upon opening the tabernacle, he saw to his amazement that the Host had turned into a bloody substance. He informed Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who gave instructions that the Host be professionally photographed. The photos were taken on September 6. They clearly show that the Host, which had become a fragment of bloodied flesh, had grown significantly in size. For several years the Host remained in the tabernacle, the whole affair being kept a strict secret. Since the Host suffered no visible decomposition, Cardinal Bergoglio decided to have it scientifically analyzed.

On October 5, 1999, in the presence of the Cardinal’s representatives, Dr. Castanon took a sample of the bloody fragment and sent it to New York for analysis. Since he did not wish to prejudice the study, he purposely did not inform the team of scientists of its provenance. One of these scientists was Dr. Frederic Zugiba, the well-known cardiologist and forensic pathologist. He determined that the analyzed substance was real flesh and blood containing human DNA. Zugiba testified that, “the analyzed material is a fragment of the heart muscle found in the wall of the left ventricle close to the valves. This muscle is responsible for the contraction of the heart. It should be borne in mind that the left cardiac ventricle pumps blood to all parts of the body. The heart muscle is in an inflammatory condition and contains a large number of white blood cells. This indicates that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken. It is my contention that the heart was alive, since white blood cells die outside a living organism. They require a living organism to sustain them. Thus, their presence indicates that the heart was alive when the sample was taken. What is more, these white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, which further indicates that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely about the chest.”

Two Australians, journalist Mike Willesee and lawyer Ron Tesoriero, witnessed these tests. Knowing where sample had come from, they were dumbfounded by Dr. Zugiba’s testimony. Mike Willesee asked the scientist how long the white blood cells would have remained alive if they had come from a piece of human tissue, which had been kept in water. They would have ceased to exist in a matter of minutes, Dr. Zugiba replied. The journalist then told the doctor that the source of the sample had first been kept in ordinary water for a month and then for another three years in a container of distilled water; only then had the sample been taken for analysis. Dr. Zugiba’s was at a loss to account for this fact. There was no way of explaining it scientifically, he stated. Only then did Mike Willesee inform Dr. Zugiba that the analyzed sample came from a consecrated Host (white, unleavened bread) that had mysteriously turned into bloody human flesh. Amazed by this information, Dr. Zugiba replied, “How and why a consecrated Host would change its character and become living human flesh and blood will remain an inexplicable mystery to science—a mystery totally beyond her competence.”

Only faith in the extraordinary action of a God provides the reasonable answer—faith in a God, who wants to make us aware that He is truly present in the mystery of the Eucharist.

The Eucharistic miracle in Buenos Aires is an extraordinary sign attested to by science. Through it Jesus desires to arouse in us a lively faith in His real presence in the Eucharist. He reminds us that His presence is real, and not symbolic. Only with the eyes of faith do we see Him under appearance of the consecrated bread and wine. We do not see Him with our bodily eyes, since He is present in His glorified humanity. In the Eucharist Jesus sees and loves us and desires to save us.

http://www.loamagazine.org/nr/the_main_topic/eucharistic_miracle_in_buenos.html

Inspired by St. Catherine…….

On this beautiful feast of the glorious virgin, doctor, and stigmatist, St. Catherine of Siena, I offer a re-post of an article which I wrote during my first months of blogging in 2011. It was inspired by St. Catherine’s exquisite prayer to the Trinity, which is printed below this post.

An excellent biography on St. Catherine is Catherine of Siena, by Sigrid Undset, Ignatius Press.

But Catherine’s own exquisite spiritual classic, dictated while she was in ecstasy, is called The Dialogue, and contains her extraordinary conversations with God the Father.

Pray for us O St. Catherine, beloved daughter of God!

I read yesterday that God is truly, completely, absolutely, Our Father. Our existence comes forth from Him.  He gives His Own Life to us. He is really Our Father — much more than our earthly fathers could ever be.

How beautiful to call God “FATHER” — not just as a title, but as a true relationship.

This is a truth of our faith which we can never completely comprehend or exhaust.  We must return to it again and again to allow God to reveal its wonders, its heights and depths, and privilege beyond all imagining.

I recall with joy how I knew and cherished every inch of my son’s tiny body when he was an infant. I loved the sweet smell of his hair, the softness of his tiny feet, and the roundness of his baby tummy. There was never a scratch or a rash or a mark of any kind which escaped my notice. Caressed, kissed, rocked, this tiny child drew never before known streams of delight and tenderness from my heart.

Are we not consumed with love for our own children — intoxicated by our babies? So also God is intoxicated with us.  More than intoxicated – “madly in love” so say the Saints.

We are His precious little ones.

Therese reserved for herself in Heaven the very ”lap” of God.  She dreamed of the day when she would be able to climb up, and play on the knees of the Almighty One.

If we seek to become a little child like Therese, we will be humble and reverent, but also delighted that we are so loved by Our Father.  If we approach Him as a child, He will permit us intimacies which even the angels do not enjoy.

Once, when I was feeling sad and lonely, I said to God:  “Oh how I wish You could give me a hug!”  Immediately I heard in my heart, so clearly and tenderly, “I am always hugging you.” 

If the very hairs of our head are counted, as Jesus tells us, then can we doubt that we too are being kissed and caressed and rocked in the arms of God – “always.”

 (See below for related idea expressed much more eloquently by the great Saint and Doctor of the Church) 

St. Catherine of Siena prayer to the Trinity:

“How, then, did you create, O Eternal Father, this your creature? [...] Fire constrained you. O ineffable love, even though in your light you saw all the iniquities, which your creature would commit against your infinite goodness, you looked as if you did not see, but rested your sight on the beauty of your creature, whom you, as mad and drunk with love, fell in love with and out of love you drew her to yourself giving her being in your image and likeness. You, eternal truth, have declared to me your truth, that is, that loved constrained you to create her.”

Have you had your smile today?

In today’s climate of terrorism, secularism, relativism and all the other “isms,” I sometimes feel I will pull my hair out in frustration…if it doesn’t fall out from the stress.

That’s when I go looking for a smile. I found two on Facebook today, and thought I would share them with you. Hope you get a too!

The first one made me laugh out loud. Catholic philosopher, Peter Kreeft, knows how to zero in on the Truth.

The second photograph from Pope Francis’ Wednesday audience is adorable. I wonder if he will keep the rosary. It looks like a simple one that he would like. God bless the children, whose innocence shines in the darkness of this world.

Tuesday adoration….give Me every moment

Jesus is real.  He’s not a nice idea, or someone who lived long ago.  He’s real now.

I was driving to my Tuesday adoration hours this afternoon when a very joyful young woman on the radio emphatically stated the above words.  Coincidentally, she was sharing her own experiences with Our Blessed Lord in Eucharistic Adoration.

“We cannot conceive how much our visits mean to Him,” she went on.  Then she shared this little story:

I had promised to make a holy hour each day during Lent.  But one night, I got home really late, and I decided to go to bed instead.  But, the Lord was relentless.  My conscience kept bothering me and so I got up and got dressed and went to the chapel.

I tried to stay awake, and after checking my watch, I saw that 50 minutes had passed.  Is it okay if I leave now, Jesus?  It’s almost an hour.  Then I heard in my heart these words, “Before you go, open the bible.”  So, I did, and it opened to Matthew 26:40, “Could you not watch one hour with Me?”  Oh no!  I’m so sorry, Jesus.  I’ll stay.

And then she went on to talk about how crazy in love with each of us Jesus is.  How it matters; it really matters that we spend time with Him.

Funny….earlier today I was going through a box of old books, and thumbed through one about some private revelations concerning the Eucharist from Jesus to a nun in Kenya. ” I count your very breaths, your every heartbeat.  You cannot imagine My Love for you….and I am abandoned here in My tabernacle.”  I put that book in the save pile.

Listening to that joyful young woman on the radio this afternoon gave me much to ponder when I reached the chapel….three minutes late.  My prayer partner is always on time, so it never occurred to me that being one to five minutes late, as I often am, mattered that much.  But today I realized that it matters very much to Jesus.  

When you love someone deeply, you cannot wait to see them again.  When my son and his wife came for dinner Sunday, I was so excited when I heard their car in the driveway.

But Jesus!  Who can measure His Love for us?  He sold Himself for me, for you.  I know He thought about us while He hung on that Cross.  And because He is God, He could think of each and every one of us by name.  I think He did that.  I think His Love, not His Power, was the strength that kept Him on that Cross.

What did He see, looking down through the ages?  Who would return His Love?  Is that why He cried out, “I thirst!”  Did He see the paltry return most of us would make for His entire gift of Himself?

Did He see me, taking a break, between my 4pm and 5pm holy hours?  While it’s true that because I am the only adorer at 5pm, I often need to grab a little snack before my 4pm prayer partner leaves…because I tend to get low blood sugar symptoms at the 6pm Mass, if I don’t.

But, how many times have I checked phone messages while in the car getting my snack? Or even texted a quick reply to someone?  Or put on some lipstick?  And yet, Jesus was counting the minutes.  Jesus, was in the chapel waiting, while I wasted time that I had promised to Him.

Jesus is real!  But, He is so much more than that.  He is God, and He loves us beyond anything that we could desire or dream of or hope for.  The Saints tell us that we would literally die if we could for a moment experience that Love in Its Fullness.

St. Therese experienced a few moments of only a touch of this Divine Love a few days after she had made her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, and she declared that she would have been dead, had It lasted a second longer.  She was on fire!

I thank Jesus that I heard that young woman on the radio today.  It was like He was saying to me:

Remember a long time ago, when you first began to come?  Remember when spending hours with me was so new to you?

You brought Me flowers, and you knelt the whole time just gazing at Me.  You were so careful to bow reverently, and you hated so much to leave Me when our time was over.

Let it be like that again.  I so long for your love, and every moment is precious to Me.  Don’t  waste even one when you are here.  

Most of all, fall in love with Me again…and again.   Just as I am forever and eternally in love with you, My precious child.

“But I’m the Pope. Sit down.”

“But I’m the Pope. Sit down.”.

Another delightful Pope Francis “incident.”  Do click over for the short read.  So worth it!  You will smile  :)

“The beatitude of faith…..”

I love today’s gospel.  Even when I was a child, I was so delighted to hear those beautiful words Jesus spoke to Thomas:  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.

“That’s me!” I would inwardly exclaim.  And so it is, and hopefully, it is you too!

Our Holy Father Francis focused on these words from the gospel in his Regina Caeli message, on the Feast of Divine Mercy, in Rome today.  He too seemed to say, “That’s me!”

Vatican City, Apr 7, 2013 / 07:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On the Feast of Divine Mercy, Pope Francis emphasized that when Jesus said “blessed are those who do not see and yet believe,” he was also referring to those who believed the testimony of the Apostles and everyone today who hears the witness of Christians and believes.

“And who were they who believed without seeing? Other disciples, men and women of Jerusalem that, while they did not meet the resurrected Jesus, believed in the testimony of the Apostles and the women,” Pope Francis said April 7 before a crowd of around 100,000 people.

The Pope made his remarks before praying the Regina Caeli from the window of the papal apartment that overlooks St. Peter’s Square.

He focused on the Gospel reading for today, which recalls the encounter between St. Thomas and Jesus after the resurrection.

When he first heard the news of the resurrection, the Pope noted that Thomas responded, “If I do not see and do not touch, I will not believe.”

But eight days later, Jesus appeared to the Apostles in the upper room and invited Thomas to look at his wounds, to touch them, and he exclaimed: “My Lord my God.”

“Jesus replied, ‘because you have seen me, you have believed: blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.’”

“This is a very important word on faith,” Pope Francis stated, adding that “we can call it the beatitude of faith.”

“At all times and in all places are blessed are those who, through the Word of God proclaimed in Church and witnessed by Christians, believe that Jesus Christ is the love of God incarnate, Mercy incarnate.

“And this is true for each of us!” he exclaimed.

Source: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-those-who-believe-without-seeing-includes-us/

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Today is my dad’s birthday. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 93. I would be most grateful to anyone who offers a prayer for the repose of his soul. And, I will remember all of you at Mass today. Thank you!

An Easter gift to the world….

Can we ever really tire of this beautiful scene? Below is young Dominic’s father’s account of this unforgettable moment, in his own words.

Paul Gondreau is a theology professor in Rome. He and his wife and their five children had come to St. Peter’s Square for a glimpse of the Holy Father. The Swiss Guard allowed his handicapped son, Dominic, and one other family member, his mother, to move to the front of the barricade. Dr. Gondreau and his four other children watched the jumbotron in joyful disbelief, as Pope Francis and Dominic unexpectedly embraced.

“Small acts with great love,” Mother Teresa was fond of saying. Yesterday, Pope Francis bestowed an extraordinary Easter blessing upon my family when he performed such an act in embracing my son, Dominic, who has cerebral palsy. The embrace occurred when the Pope spied my son while touring the Square, packed with a quarter million pilgrims, in the “pope mobile” after Mass. This tender moment, an encounter of a modern Francis with a modern Dominic (as most know, tradition holds that St. Francis and St. Dominic enjoyed an historic encounter), moved not only my family (we were all moved to tears), not only those in the immediate vicinity (many of whom were also brought to tears by it), not only by thousands who were watching on the big screens in the Square, but by the entire world. Images of this embrace quickly went viral, and by Easter Sunday afternoon it was the lead picture on the Drudge Report, with the caption, “Change Hatred into Love” (a paraphrase of Pope Francis’ Urbi et Orbi message that followed shortly thereafter), where it remains even as I write this. Fox News, NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightly News, and CNN all showed clips of it. Lead pictures of it were found in Le Figaro, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, inter alia.

It is often difficult to try to express to people who do not have special needs children what kind of untold sacrifices are demanded of us each and every day. And as for Dominic, he has already shared in Christ’s Cross more than I have throughout my entire life multiplied a thousand times over. What is the purpose in all this, I ask? Furthermore, I often tend to see my relationship with Dominic in a one-sided manner. Yes, he suffers more than me, but it’s constantly ME who must help HIM. Which is how our culture often looks upon the disabled: as weak, needy individuals who depend so much upon others, and who contribute little, if anything, to those around them.

Pope Francis’ embrace of my son yesterday turns this logic completely on its head and, in its own small yet powerful way, shows once again how the wisdom of the Cross confounds human wisdom. Why is the whole world so moved by images of this embrace? A woman in the Square, moved to tears by the embrace, perhaps answered it best when she to my wife afterward, “You know, your son is here to show people how to love.” To show people how to love. This remark hit my wife as a gentle heaven-sent confirmation of what she has long suspected: that Dominic’s special vocation in the world is to move people to love, to show people how to love. We human beings are made to love, and we depend upon examples to show us how to do this.

But how can a disabled person show us how to love in a way that only a disabled person can? Because the Cross of Christ is sweet and is of a higher order. Christ’s resurrection from the Cross proclaims that the love he offers us, the love that we, in our turn, are to show others, is the REAL reason he endured the Cross in the first place. Our stony hearts are transformed into this Christ-like love, and thereby empowered to change hatred into love, only through the Cross. And no one shares in the Cross more intimately than the disabled. And so the disabled become our models and our inspiration. Yes, I give much to my son, Dominic. But he gives me more, WAY more. I help him stand and walk, but he shows me how to love. I feed him, but he shows me how to love. I bring him to physical therapy, but he shows me how to love. I stretch his muscles and joke around with him, but he shows me how to love. I lift him in and out of his chair, I wheel him all over the place, but he shows me how to love. I give up my time, so much time, for him, but he shows me how to love.

This lesson, to repeat, confounds the wisdom of the world. Heck, it confounds me when I, as his parent, so often fail to see my son’s condition for what it is. The lesson my disabled son gives stands as a powerful testament to the dignity and infinite value of every human person, especially of those the world deems the weakest and most “useless.” Through their sharing in the “folly” of the Cross, the disabled are, in truth, the most powerful and the most productive among us.

One more thing. Pope Francis’ embrace of my son, Dominic, indicates that we should not interpret the new Pontiff’s expressed devotion to the poor, already a cornerstone of his pontificate, in facile, purely material (let alone political) categories. His Easter embrace of my son stands out as a compelling witness to the kind of “poverty” that he urges us to adopt, the poverty that he pointed to in the opening line of his Urbi et Orbi message yesterday: “I would like [the message of Christ's resurrection] to go out to every house and every family, especially where the suffering is greatest…” Parents of disabled children, stand up and find solace and encouragement in these simple yet profound words.

Source: Catholic Moral Theology: http://catholicmoraltheology.com/a-special-vocation-to-show-people-how-to-love/