Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Some of us seek to touch the lesser celebrities of our world, the reality-show stars, the titans of commerce, the political power brokers. As Paul puts it in Colossians 2, we can be attracted by their “empty, seductive, philosophy.” It can be difficult to see that their power is fleeting, and the healing temporary, if at all.
Then there are the true celebrities. Often, they lack the same physical attributes and carefully cultivated talking points. Here’s an example: She was never pretty in the traditional sense, not even when she was young. The nose was always too big. She was short, standing five feet on a good day. She spoke bluntly and often made those who heard her uncomfortable. But there was something about Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, whom the world knows as St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. People wanted to be around her, the desperately poor of Calcutta, the school children she visited with on a trip to Northern Virginia in 1982, the presidents and other world
St. Teresa is on the left.
leaders who jockeyed for time with her. Even many of those who criticized her were unable to simply ignore her; they watched her every move, followed her every word, examined how she spent every dollar.
Why? Because power came forth from her. Even in her own long, dark night of the soul, she radiated knowledge of the Lord in her smile and the light in her eyes.
What we perhaps don’t recognize that, ugly as we may feel at times inside and out, our faith instills power in all of us. People look to us, seek to touch us, more than we realize. They are our children, our spouses, our coworkers, our fellow parishioners, total strangers. He can heal them through us. All we have to do is get out of the way and believe.
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