Today I allowed the numbness I have felt since the sudden death of my son, Peter to thaw a little. As my wife and I were making our home visits to people in need for our St. Vincent De Paul Conference I used the healing power I feel on these visits to offset the pain I started to feel of my own loss.
This afternoon I did some picking of tomatoes and other garden bounty by myself, without the help of my grandchildren or my brothers who had come to comfort and console us. Working in the garden has always been healing but today I realized how past work on the garden has allowed me to take some time off the last month from caring for it, yet it continues to produce fruit. The worms keep working; the soil provides energy to the plants that produce the bounty. Past garden work over the years has given the garden the ability to produce with minimum of care — basically picking it.
This reminds me of a profound thought my wife’s brother, a Catholic priest, provided in his homily at my son’s funeral liturgy Monday. He quoted a mystic and holy Indian priest who he works with in his parish as saying that because of all the prayers for Peter over the years, God had given Peter authority over his own life. I am not sure I understand this reflection completely but I do see the comparison to nature and the garden.
In my Eulogy for Peter yesterday I talked about my favorite story of Jesus healing of someone possessed, or as we would say, someone with a brain disease. While Jesus was on the mountain being transfigured in front of a few disciples, some other disciples were trying to answer the petition of a father asking that the demons in his son be expelled. They could not do it and when Jesus came down the mountain he answered the prayers of the father and expelled the demons from the boy. When his disciples asked him why they could not do it he answered that some demons can only be expelled by prayer.
My son was freed of his demons or disease as an answer to all the prayers for him by so many friends and family over the years. Like the work in the garden gave it power to produce, all the prayers for my son were answered by God in his death. He is free at last. Now I am free to feel.
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