Father Simone’s Word of the Week

I am thankful to say I answer many calls to ministry at David Simpson Hospice on 185th.  Jesus is intimately close to those who work there and dwell there.  The other week I received a request and I dropped everything to go see a young man in his forties who was declining.  He had been developmentally disabled all his life.  He was also deaf and communicated through ASL.  The nurse also shared he had never been Baptized!  Some poor and misguided priest they approached had felt he lacked the reason to properly receive this Sacrament.  I was coming out with my Holy Water today!  As I sat in my car in the parking lot, I was trying to remember the words I learned in ASL at St. Augustine’s.  I looked up videos on how to tell him “Jesus loves you.”; “Do you love Jesus?”; “Do you want to be baptized?”  When I got there, they directed me to Chuck their chaplain, a kind and saintly man.  I was happy to hear, together with the family, he had validly baptized him earlier.  He did his Christian duty to one in danger of dying.  As I approached this newly baptized man, he was mostly asleep.  As I prayed, his eyes opened and acknowledged me.  In the occasional moments his eyes glanced towards me, I didn’t have the chance to sign with him, but I didn’t need to.  This child had just been reborn of water and the Spirit.  The entirety of his sins were cleansed away, filled with the light of Christ in whom He now lived in sacrament.  As I prayed final prayers with him, 
he looked at me for a few seconds and smiled an infant-like smile.  It was the kind of smile an infant child shows upon waking up from a nap or resting upon their mother’s chest.  This young man died and entered into heaven’s rest a newly baptized, newborn child.  This is the Church and what Jesus does for us. 

How we commune, relate, look and wait for God allows what He desires.  Our soul communes with God in the way we embrace our existence, desire, will, faith and submission to His will in ways beyond words and reason.  Also in ways beyond reason, a soul can turn away from God and choose to close itself off.  Maybe that is why Jesus particularly loves the little ones.  We commune with God nonetheless: while we sleep; when we are still; when one is unable is express themselves outwardly; when one is suffering greatly or dying.  A soul in their mother’s womb communes with God and recognizes Him who made them.  From there, how we commune with God throughout our life in ways beyond reason but in faith voices our “Yes” to Him when we transition from this life.  This young man had waited his whole life to be baptized in Christ: his last day here being his first in heaven.