Thursday, October 5, 2023

THOSE TIMES AND PLACES WHERE GOD "LEAKS THROUGH"

 


The heavens opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending on him.
Matthew 3:16

They say that our polluting ways have caused “holes” in the delicate ozone layer, which keeps us from being fried by the sun’s radiation. In the spiritual world, there are similar “holes” in the dense layer that veil our view of God. Instead of deadly rays from the sun, a little of God himself shines through.

The Irish call them “thin places,” places where the separation between heaven and earth, the sacred and the secular, seems especially porous. God leaks through more easily in these places, it is thought. Another way of saying it is that, in such places, people find the presence of God more easily. I, too, have been in such places where God seemed especially present.

Before she died at age 98, I used to fix a Mother’s Day brunch every year for an old friend who was not even kin to me. It was always a magic time, a time when I felt that I was actually mediating God’s love to someone who needed to feel it in a tangible way. On such occasions, it was obvious from her face that these simple gestures had great significance.

When I was on-call at the neonatal unit of Norton Hospital, I was called in the wee hours of the morning by the parents of a very sick child. When I got there, I found them asleep on the floor, face to face, holding one rosary between them, obviously exhausted from several nights of keeping vigil. They had fallen asleep praying for God’s help. I could feel the presence of God hovering over them.

I remember being called to anoint a young man who was dying from the complications of AIDS. It was back when AIDS was new on the scene and people were still reacting irrationally. His family, most of his friends and probably his insurance company had abandoned him, with the exception of one compassionate neighbor. The apartment was almost empty, except for a mattress on the floor.

When I arrived, he was filled with guilt, self-loathing and irritation at the church. He was both repulsed and attracted by the idea of a priest coming to see him. I talked to him about the Jesus I knew, the Jesus who welcomed, touched and ate with the marginalized.

At some point, I put my prayer book down and spoke from the heart. As I tried to comfort him with the “good news” that God loves all of us without condition — no ands, ifs or buts about it — I had a strong sense of Jesus speaking through me at that moment.

There are “thin places” everywhere, places where God seems to "leak through" more easily. Once we have been under one of these “thin places,” we do not need “proof” of the existence of God. We understand on some deep level that God’s love is shining on us all the time. 

 


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