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The
Crack and the Light
July 27, 2003 Homily
Fr. George Smiga
John
6: 1-15
There
are times when life seems unfair. When someone we love is
hurt, when we need to deal with a serious disease, when someone
we trust betrays us, it is easy for us to say, "Why is
this happening to me? I don't deserve this." The anger
and the depression of those times leads to question our ability
to continue. In those circumstances it is easy to doubt whether
there is enough strength, enough wisdom, enough hope for us
to go on. That is why today's Gospel is so important, because
in the Gospel Jesus tells us that when God is active, there
is always enough. God can find life in our darkest moments.
If Jesus was able to feed five thousand people with a few
barley loaves, then certainly we can count on God to be present
in our time of need. But if we are to believe that and see
that, we need to let the flow of our life play out so that
we can understand the specific way that God is directing us
and guiding us.
Kevin
was twenty-five years old when his doctors told him that he
had bone cancer and the only way he could survive would be
to have his right leg amputated at the hip. He agreed to the
procedure and it was successful. But it left Kevin an angry
and depressed young man. He couldn't understand how life could
be so unfair to take away his leg at such a young age. He
bore a deep resentment against people who were well and had
use of all of their limbs.
Luckily
he found a skilled therapist who began to work with him, discussing
the events of his life and using art therapy to allow his
deeper emotions to emerge. Over a period of two years he began
to make progress. He began to accept the loss of his leg and
look for meaning in life. What he found was that he had a
gift of sharing his experience with others who were undergoing
similar losses. He was very good at that kind of sharing.
The medical community began to know of Kevin's ability and
began to ask him to visit some of their patients who had undergone
a very serious disability.
On one
occasion he was asked to visit a young woman about his own
age who had just lost both of her breasts to cancer. She was
so depressed that she found it difficult to speak to anyone.
Kevin came to her hospital room in the middle of the summer
wearing a pair of shorts that clearly revealed his artificial
leg. But the woman would not even raise her eyes to address
him because she was so embarrassed of her disfigurement.
The nurses had left some music playing in the room and in
an attempt to get her attention Kevin turned up the volume,
removed his artificial leg and began dancing around the room
with one leg, snapping his finger to the music. His response
was so unexpected and bizarre that the young woman looked
up and watched him in astonishment for a few moments and then
began to laugh. "Man," she said, "If you can
dance, I can sing." Through such experiences Kevin discovered
a purpose and a direction in his life which he never had before.
After
a number of years, he decided to meet with his therapist again
to review his progress. When they got together and she opened
his file, out fell a drawing that Kevin had made early in
his therapy. He picked it up and realized what it was at once.
It was one of the earliest drawings he made. His therapist
had asked him to draw a picture of how he saw his body. He
had drawn a large vase and then with a black crayon he had
drawn a jagged crack down the center of that vase. Kevin remembered
how his teeth were clenched in anger as he drew that crack
and how hard he pressed with the crayon on the paper. For
this crack represented to him how he was forever flawed, how
his body was broken and no longer whole. He felt he could
never live life fully again.
Holding
the picture now several years later, he said to his therapist,
"You know, I don't think this picture is finished."
"Really?" she said. And pushing him a carton of
crayons suggested, "Why don't you finish it now?"
Kevin took a yellow crayon from the box and began to draw
broad lines of yellow emanating out from every area of that
crack. Then he said to his therapist, "I now realize
that it is from this crack that the light shines forth."
Kevin's
experience reflects what we believe as Christians. For we
believe that those things that attack us in life, those things
that are unfair do not need to destroy us. We believe that
with God's help we can find life even in the midst of death.
We believe that with God's help even though we are wounded
there will be enough strength, enough wisdom, enough hope
for us not simply to continue, but to grow and to thrive.
The choice, of course, is always ours. When things in life
attack us, when we must face problems in our family, sickness,
addiction, loss, we can receive those things either as a blow
that ruins us forever, or with God's help see them as a crack
from which in time the light will shine forth.
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