Focused Link: Seeing God in Others
I consider this as another way to appreciate corporal works of mercy. Excerpt below.
The full article:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/social_justice/sj00196.html
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What I discover today is every time I see a man or a woman with a severe mental handicap — the incredible cry that is coming from them — what I would call the primal cry — which is, "Do you love me?" — a very deep cry. And you find with people with mental handicaps that this is their — "Do you love me?", "Why have I been abandoned?" or "Has my life any value?"
Somewhere this cry of, "Do you want to be my friend?" touched me. I began visiting asylums, hospitals, different institutions, families, and I discovered an immense world of pain which I never, never could have imagined. I had been schooled in the Navy and in a world of efficiency. I'd then been schooled in the world of philosophy and theology. Suddenly to discover these big hospitals with hundreds — sometimes thousands — of mentally handicapped people living in obvious pain. And from their being came immense cries of violence, of auto-mutilation — hitting their heads. So I discovered all this world which I hadn't even imagined existed. I met parents — the pain of parents.
And it seemed very clear to me that Jesus was asking me just to take one or two men and to start living together. So I was able to buy a small, broken-down house and I welcomed two men, Raphael and Philippe, from an institution. Raphael had had meningitis. He couldn't walk very well, he couldn't speak very well. Philippe had had encephalitis — one arm paralyzed, one leg paralyzed — living in a world of dream, but also with quite a severe mental handicap.
The full article:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/social_justice/sj00196.html
*~*~*~*~*
What I discover today is every time I see a man or a woman with a severe mental handicap — the incredible cry that is coming from them — what I would call the primal cry — which is, "Do you love me?" — a very deep cry. And you find with people with mental handicaps that this is their — "Do you love me?", "Why have I been abandoned?" or "Has my life any value?"
Somewhere this cry of, "Do you want to be my friend?" touched me. I began visiting asylums, hospitals, different institutions, families, and I discovered an immense world of pain which I never, never could have imagined. I had been schooled in the Navy and in a world of efficiency. I'd then been schooled in the world of philosophy and theology. Suddenly to discover these big hospitals with hundreds — sometimes thousands — of mentally handicapped people living in obvious pain. And from their being came immense cries of violence, of auto-mutilation — hitting their heads. So I discovered all this world which I hadn't even imagined existed. I met parents — the pain of parents.
And it seemed very clear to me that Jesus was asking me just to take one or two men and to start living together. So I was able to buy a small, broken-down house and I welcomed two men, Raphael and Philippe, from an institution. Raphael had had meningitis. He couldn't walk very well, he couldn't speak very well. Philippe had had encephalitis — one arm paralyzed, one leg paralyzed — living in a world of dream, but also with quite a severe mental handicap.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
11:15 PM
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