A Glimpse of Eternity
Yesterday morning I was cleaning up some files on my computer, trying to better organize the material. It seemed like a waste of time. Then I came across a file that just contained a few sentences. It was something I jotted down in Peru back in 2005 while I was making my film The Patients of a Saint. The lines did make it into the film…but I have not watched the film in a very long time, and had forgotten them.
As I read them this morning, they hit me with a new force, coming on the heels of my recent time in Uganda.
I do not understand why so many kids suffer from so many dreadful diseases. I shall never understand. But my hunch is that the road to God goes through Chaclacayo, goes through every place on earth where there is suffering. Because God does not like suffering, the road to God goes through humanity, and the road is paved by works of mercy and compassion, acts of love which bring relief to the suffering that all life must bear because of our separation from God. The dinner tables at Hogar San Francisco de Assisi [the home and clinic run by Dr. Tony] ….are altars, and each child is a priest. And within every moment of kindness we catch a glimpse of eternity.
Year in and year out, the suffering continues. And except for the few quiet, everyday saints working in virtual obscurity on the margins of society, year in and year out, we continue to ignore it.
Maybe on this Independence Day we can take a little time to think about how we can help people become free from the dictatorship of poverty and hungry, that they too can become independent and free.
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