by Susan Fox
IN THE YEAR THAT KING UZZI’AH DIED, Isaiah had a vision of
God on His holy throne. Overcome with reverence, he prayed, “Woe is me! For I
am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of
unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 5-6)
I find his response to seeing God most comforting as I often
feel the same way.
I have spent my entire life in the Presence of God in the
Holy Eucharist, the One whom Isaiah prophesized when he said “Behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name
Immanuel (which means God
is with us).”
Providentially, God provided a means for Isaiah to bear the
vision. He sent a seraphim, a holy angel, with a burning coal taken from the
altar, “And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips;
your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” And God has provided the same recourse to
Catholics in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We have a means to forgiveness
that will enable us to approach God in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
My pastor today pointed out that in the Catholic Church, God
is always present with us under the appearance of Bread and Wine. In the Holy
Mass (where the word Christ’s Mass comes from), the priest prays the words of
consecration over the bread and wine, and the Holy Spirit responds by turning
these gifts into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ really present
among us. Just as the Holy Spirit
overshadowed the Virgin Mary and made her with Child (as Isaiah foretold), the
Holy Spirit turns the bread and wine into the Real Presence of Jesus. Jesus promised us He would be with us until
the end of time, and He has kept His promise.
“Unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who
eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at
the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who
eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” (John 6:53-56)
This was no symbolic talk. The disciples heard it and
started muttering among themselves that this was hard to accept. But Jesus didn’t water down the message. He
simply pointed out that no one can come to Him unless it be granted to him by
the Father.
This has been given to me by the Father. I was four years
old when my family was involved in a car accident in New Orleans in 1957. I remember the details distinctly -- a rare gift as many people don’t remember
things that happened at that early an age.
I remember the comic book I was looking at (I couldn’t read)
in the back seat. I remember looking over the seat and seeing a car coming
straight for us (it was a head on collision) and I remember my parents didn’t
see it because they were looking at each other with great love. It was a lovely
last memory of my parents’ life together, one I treasure.
When the accident occurred I was protected by the back seat,
but my parents had not used the seat belts on our new car, as it was not
something they were used to. By the time I climbed out of the back seat, I saw
Mom was knocked out in the front seat (glass emerged from her eye decades later
resulting from this accident) and my father emerged from the car with blood on
his throat.
I was taken from the car vomiting, and screaming, “Daddy,
Daddy, Daddy!” They didn’t let me go to him, and he died three days later in
the hospital. But when I cried out, my Father in heaven heard me and answered.
He so loved the world, He sent His only Son, and I was about to be the
beneficiary of that Gift foretold by Isaiah in a very personal way.
I WAS A CATHOLIC CHILD, baptized and loved, but really my
faith was not visible to me before that time.
I didn’t know Jesus. But when my
father died, my mother and grandmother took me to the hospital chapel. It was a
Catholic hospital, so the Body of Christ under the appearance of bread was
stored in a golden tabernacle in the hospital chapel. As Isaiah prophesized,
His Name was Immanuel. God was waiting for me. He was there in a real physical
way after the accident that took my father’s life.
Mom said, “There is Jesus in that tabernacle. Pray for your
Daddy.”
I prayed. I told Him I wouldn’t pray.
Now today whenever I can I go back there, and pray again,
but with great joy and gratitude for so much was given to me through that
tragic circumstance. It was April 28,
1957, but it was Christmas in a little girl’s life. God sat with me. It was as if Christ on the cross had just
said, “It is finished.” And then He was immediately by my side when I grieved
my father’s death.
This great gift of His presence in the Eucharist has
remained with me my entire life. And I tell you about it now, so that you can
know He is available to you in the same way at any time in whatever troubling
circumstances you find in your life.
We often think of the Christmas story as one of joyful
anticipation and fulfillment of God’s promise to send His Son. This it is. But
there is also a lot of suffering in the Nativity of Jesus. He chose the
circumstances of His own birth, and He did not make it easy on Himself. He
wasn’t born to a rich family. There was no room at the inn, so He was born in a
stable, described as a cave. When King Herod heard of His birth, he saw a threat to his throne. So he ordered the
execution of all the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem. This was
a terrible atrocity. “Rachel weeps for
her children, and they are no more.”
His family became refugees in Egypt as his father Joseph was
warned to flee the persecution.
But I remember my son James at one week old. We took him to
a restaurant with a thousand tiny lights. He marveled at this for some time,
and then promptly fell asleep. He had also marveled at his father’s face on the
morning he was first born. His Dad was tired, having been up all night, wore a
hospital gown and puffy blue hat, but he was rocking James and singing, “Do dee
do do.” Real intelligent stuff.
Just out of the womb, the baby stared at Larry’s face very
intently.
I think Jesus picked the circumstances of His birth so He
could stare into the loving faces of Mary and Joseph, see the humble shepherds
when they came to pay their respects, and accept the homage of kings. Jesus was
always a sucker for the little people. He – King of Kings, Lord of Lords --
chose to become a little One Himself.
And that’s how I found Him, under the appearance of simple
bread, waiting to comfort me when my father died.