1/9/2015 – Friday after Epiphany – Luke 5:12-16

      We welcome everyone to our Mass of the Anointing of the Sick today in order to celebrate this wonderful sacrament of healing in our lives as we gather as a community of faith. We are so glad to have our Happy Hearts group at mass today.  In our Gospel today, we hear of Jesus having compassion for the leper who comes to him for healing in his life.  This leper has faith in Jesus.  He believes that Jesus can indeed heal him if he desires to do so.

        We also are called to reach out to those around us who need healing and compassion.  We might not even realize who is hurting around us.  One of my favorite Spanish writers is Gabriela Mistral from the country of Chile.  The anniversary of her death is tomorrow – January 10 – she died back in 1957.  I studied her poetry went I had a fellowship one summer in Chile when I taught in Greenville as a Spanish teacher.  I thought of her in today’s Gospel, because of her grant compassion, empathy, and warmth.  Gabriela Mistral was the first author from Latin America and only woman from Latin America to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.  She started her career as a teacher and educator, where she displayed a great love for the poor children she would encounter.  She also was a very devout Catholic, especially devoted to Franciscan spirituality.  She was a Third Order Franciscan and was buried in her third order habit.  Like St Francis of Assisi, her personal spirituality was marked by a mystical search for union with divine and all of God’s creation.  I want to close with a very lovely poem that Gabriela Mistral wrote entitled “Little Feet.”  I used to have my high school students memorize it as part of our study of Spanish poetry when I taught at Greenville Weston High School in the city of Greenville in the Mississippi Delta from 2000 to 2004.

Little Feet

Little feet of children

blue with cold,

how can they see you and not cover you

dear God!.

Little wounded feet

cut by every stone,

hurt by snow

and mire.

Man, blind, does not know

that where you pass,

you leave a flower

of living light.

And where you set

your little bleeding foot,

the spikenard blooms

more fragrant.

Walking straight paths,

be heroic, little feet,

as you are

perfect.

Little feet of children,

two tiny suffering jewels,

how can people pass

and not see you!

And here is the poem in its original Spanish:

Piececitos

Piececitos de niño,

azulosos de frío,

¡cómo os ven y no os cubren,

Dios mío!

¡Piececitos heridos

por los guijarros todos,

ultrajados de nieves

y lodos!

El hombre ciego ignora

que por donde pasáis,

una flor de luz viva

dejáis;

que allí donde ponéis

la plantita sangrante,

el nardo nace más

fragante.

Sed, puesto que marcháis

por los caminos rectos,

heroicos como sois

perfectos.

Piececitos de niño,

dos joyitas sufrientes,

¡cómo pasan sin veros
las gentes!