Dis-Ability. First Sunday of Lent

“When Life, like the Egyptians, maltreated and oppressed us, imposing hard labor upon us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. ”

Good Morning! I’m Deacon Patrick. I’m going to explore a bit what it means to be disabled, the clarity recognizing our disabilities can bring to our lives, our yearning to be healed, and how Jesus our Christ gives us that healing.

First, I’d like to briefly share with you my journey to becoming a deacon. Nine years ago I entered diaconal formation. Upon completing formation, a four year personal, spiritual, and academic journey — I was too young to be ordained and was thrown back into the whisky barrel to age further. Then 20 years of living unknowingly with the effects of concussions caught up with me. Apparently the brain is like the vast and intricate road system of a large city, and concussions are a lot like earthquakes to that city. My first 7 “earthquakes” weakened my brain infrastructure but I’d managed to unknowingly work around it. What I didn’t know is that my bridges, overpasses, and roadways were cracked below and even a minor earthquake could have catastrophic effect on my brain. A little over 4 years ago I had my 8th “earthquake” and became disabled. These last four years have been extremely challenging and rewarding as our family has learned to live with my disability. A few weeks ago, Bishop Sheridan ordained me a deacon, even though my service looks quite different from what other deacons are able to do.

Thank you for your prayers and support these past years. Your gift of strength, love, fortitude, and joy has helped make our family’s journey possible. Thank you.

Dis-ability. An inability to do something the way I ought to be able to. There are all kinds of disabilities. We typically think of disability as the physical ones we can see: like someone who can’t move their legs and is confined to a wheel chair. Or who is blind and needs a cane to get around. Many disabled people, however, fit into a different category. The invisible disability. Our deaf community likely knows all about meeting people who don’t know they can’t hear. Brain injured people usually look fine and no one suspects anything is wrong. Reality is vastly different. Living with Traumatic Brain Injury, I wake up each morning not knowing if I’ll be able to have breakfast with my wife and daughters or if I’ll need solitude away from the chaos of family life. Will I be in my recliner all day or will I be able to hike for miles on the North Slopes of Pikes Peak and play games with my family? When disability comes, it changes our lives and it changes us.

Each of us is disabled in some way. Somehow we’re not yet the fullness of who God made us to be. The first stage of learning to live with a disability is denying it. I went for over 20 years not recognizing that something was wrong — even though looking back I can see that the world sure seemed to be harder for me than it was for others or then I remembered it being. Even though my own disability was invisible to me, there were signs of it in my life. I think that’s true for everyone’s disabilities. Yet recognizing our own disabilities, those ways we fall short of who we could be, helps us clarify what is important — out of the clutter of busy lives comes a focus of purpose and personal calling. This Lent, I’m asking God to show me where I’m disabled that I don’t yet know about and to gift me with clarity of who I am called to be from amidst the clutter. I invite each of us to do the same.

(Please kneel.)

Shortly we’ll have a minute of silence. In that minute of silence ask God to show you your disability. God often does this through the voice of those closest to us. Is there something I am not able to do in the way I ought to? Show me where I am weak, Lord. Maybe, like Jesus being tempted in the desert, I too am tempted. Maybe, unlike Jesus, I give in to the temptation. When am I afraid? What am I afraid of losing? What do I cling to? How am I disabled?

Lord speak to us in the silence. (1 minute of silence.)

(Thank you. Please be seated.)

When we’re disabled, we recognize that we aren’t the way God intended us to be. We’re broken. And we have a choice. We can mope about it and feel sorry for ourselves — which we all do occasionally. Or we can decide to lean on God, trust that despite our disability God can somehow use us to make this world more like God’s Kingdom, and we can seek the gifts all around rather than dwell on the pain.

Once we realize we are dis-abled, we yearn for healing. After I was disabled many people lovingly shared with me ways to place myself at God’s feet and ask for healing. With time, one very simple, profound healing prayer has come to carry deep meaning for me. It happens at every Mass. Did you know that every Mass is a healing Mass? "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed". “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you (because I often put ambition, image, piety, or something else I want as more important than you), but despite my failures and blindness, only say the word and I shall be healed.”

The Mass is mystical. It grabs us and takes us where God needs us to be. Right now we are transcending time and space. Right now we are united with the Israelites as they mark their doors with lamb’s blood so God will spare their first born sons. Right now we wander in the desert for 40 days, tempted by Satan, Jesus at our side reminding us how to respond. Right now we are united with Jesus, his Apostles and disciples in a small room in Jerusalem, the aroma of rich wine and roasted lamb tantalizing our pallets at the Passover meal, which we know as the Last Supper. Right now, we are united with the eternal Mass of Heaven: Choirs of angels, all the Saints, and the Lamb who gives himself for us. The Mass is mystical. Every part of the Mass has the potential to grab us and take us exactly where God needs us to be.

I love the healing that happens every time I enter into this timelylessness of the Mass -- it prepares me for that time when we are to be fully healed (what a delicious and awful experience that will be!). I feel a powerful juxtaposition of anguish and elation each time we say that prayer -- anguish at the chasm between where I am and full healing, elation in knowing that God does say the word and I will be healed.

Our first reading reminds us that God delivers us out of bondage, out of disability, into a land of abundance! The Gospel reminds us that we will experience hardship and temptation, but that God is with us and we have only to choose to be with God. God loves us beyond understanding! God will say the word and we will be healed! We will become the fulness of who God created us to be! Some of that healing may happen here and now, before we die. But when we die, striving and struggling to run toward Jesus our Christ, then we will be completely healed — we will become fully human.

Fully human. I don’t think we understand very well what that means. Jesus shows us what it means. The union of divine with human. Jesus came to show us our full potential. It doesn’t lie in the temptations of power, importance, or wealth as Satan tempts us with every day. By his answers to these temptations, Jesus shows us that to be fully human we need God. We do not live by bread alone. We should worship the Lord our God and serve only Him. And we shall not put the Lord our God to the test. To be fully human, we need to make God’s will our own, taking on divine qualities and characteristics. Rather like water mixed with a carafe of wine.

Common, ordinary water, blessed by the Trinity through the vine, sun, and wind, is transformed into ripe succulent grapes. Grapes are tromped, mixed and aged to become rich robust wine — the wine soon to be placed on this altar. In preparing the table for our meal of Jesus, I’ll pour three drops of water into the wine, three drops which represent each of us, with the prayer "By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Being less able to do what we ought to be able to, we are much like those drops of water. Dropped into the divine life of God all around us and blessed by God’s grace, we take on the qualities and characteristics of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father, fulfilling our potential.

Disability is built into our journey, just as it is built into the journey of water as it enters into the wine and is transformed into the Blood of Christ, surrendering itself to embrace its full promise. God loves us so beyond measure that he sent his only Son to show us our promise. We may each be disabled in various and sundry ways, but our potential is no less amazing than water which through time, crafting, and grace becomes wine, placed on the altar and through prayer, faith, and grace becomes the Blood of Christ. May we come to share in the divinity of Christ!

This Lent, I invite and challenge each of us to figure out how we are less than human, how we are disabled, and place our disabilities and ourselves on the altar along with the bread, the water, and the wine, that we may be transformed into the fullness of who God created us to be. Lord, only say the word and I shall be healed.