I used my napkin to blot the blood off my small puncture wounds, thanked God that I still had my eyesight (an inch higher, and I could have literally been blinded), and soon, laughed with my wife over the peculiar event. It was the beginning of a rough week, and it got me thinking about blindness, and its link to a loss of peace.
Finding peace can be a hard and frustrating task. In a society of broken families, glamorized materialism, high-stress workplaces, low moral standards, and little girls armed with small forks, it should not surprise us when, at times, we feel blinded by the darkness and can’t seem to find peace. So, what is the panacea to feeling stressed out at school, angry at home, and unaccepted in the social scene? I contemplated this during my rough week, and came up with an interesting answer: We need to find a magic bean…
What?! Yes, a magic bean, but different than the one in Jack and the Beanstalk. We need a “Holy Spirit” bean. Just like Jack’s mother, there will be some who will be ready to mock our bean, spit on our bean, or even throw our bean out the window…but that’s because they don’t really see the power of the bean!
Here’s what I really mean. I have come to believe that without the eyes of faith, there will always be an excuse. If we’re looking for a way not to believe, we can find one, even if God works a miracle right before our eyes. In fact, that’s what happened when the Apostles began to speak in tongues and preach to the massive crowds on Pentecost (Acts 2:13). Some in the crowd actually tried to pass off the amazing events that day on the idea that the Apostles were drunk! How ridiculous! But then, they did not have eyes of faith.
In the liturgical year of the Church, we have just entered a new season of Ordinary Time, which was set off by the dramatic event of the unleashing of the Holy Spirit’s power upon the Apostles. I like to think of it this way: there is nothing ordinary about a season set off by such an event! This is a time to revel in the Spirit that Christ has sent us! Admittedly, we weren’t actually there when the tongues of fire settled on their heads, and we didn’t see the miracle with our own eyes. Does that mean it didn’t really happen that way? Could it be that we lack faith, just like some of the crowd did that day? Maybe we have not trained our eyes of faith to see the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And maybe that is enough to let the chaos of blindness reign in our lives instead of the peace and freedom that only the Spirit of God can bring.
If we ask the Holy Spirit to remain active in our lives, it will be hard for the blindness of doubt to seep in. Why? Because we are promised, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17), and we know that freedom in the Spirit is a direct link to peace, because “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace” (Gal 5:22).
So, whether it is an actual “bean” or not, it may not be a bad idea to get some tangible, small object (a rosary, a small cross, etc.) to keep in our pockets to remind us of the peace that the Holy Spirit brings. Let’s pray for a deepening of faith and a real sense of the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts, just as on Pentecost. Let’s pray that our belief will run deeply and will give us eyes of true faith. And when people, with their negativity and doubt, try to throw our “Holy Spirit bean” away, let’s pray for the grace to charitably throw our faith back at them with the same zeal with which little girls use small forks and the Apostles preached on the first Pentecost.
© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange
Brian Butler is the Director of Religious Formation at Archbishop Rummel High School in Metairie, Louisiana and the co-founder of Dumb Ox Productions, LLC www.dumboxproductions.com.
