By Sister Teresa Christine, O.C.D.
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (C.S. Lewis)
In this world filled with so much pain, there remains one sure and certain foundation on which we can place our hope: heaven is at work to bring good out of all things (cf. Romans 8:28). God wants to purify and heal us of what keeps us away from Him. We need a strong medicine for this healing. God is like a loving parent who knows that the cure for their child’s illness may be painful but necessary, and so allows them to undergo a painful procedure. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is our mother, and as a good mother, holds us while the Divine Physician comes to reset our broken bones.
February 11th is a day of great significance to Catholics in many ways. One way is the Church’s celebration of Our Lady of Lourdes when we ask her to reach out most tenderly to bring healing to our bodies and souls.
February 11th is also the anniversary of death of Venerable Mother Luisita, our foundress. Founding her new Carmelite community in the midst of major political unrest and persecution of the Church in socialist Mexico in 1921, she and the sisters taught children and served the sick, risking their own lives to bring the healing of heaven to God’s people. The Church also sets aside February 11th as a special day to pray for the sick, such an acute need in our twenty-first century world.
Mother Luisita, in imitation of Mary, became a conduit of God’s peace and guidance to anyone who was lost or afraid. She, like all the saints, was courageous enough to allow the Divine Physician to place His scalpel where He desired. She was made whole under His steady hand, and having been purified, was able to lead many others to Him. Whatever the situation of our own personal lives at this time, God can use it to expose our wounds, heal them, and bring us through it to greater freedom on the other side. If we allow our hearts to open to God in the process and expand in His love, we will also become the channels of grace our world desperately needs.
Let us pray fervently today for the sick and broken in our world and ask for the grace to surrender to the purifying hand of God’s work in our own souls. In that way, we may become a healing balm for the world.
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!
