I am Sofia's mother. She was our third child, one of six, and profoundly handicapped from birth.
For twenty years, she lived at home with us. She could not walk, could not speak, could not care for herself. Yet we often sensed her smiling at us through her cries, her laughter, her uncontrolled gestures.
Now, freed from her earthly handicap, Sofia is surely in God's glory—and I am certain—she is the one who takes our hand as we walk the path of life.
Sofia Remains a Mystery
Suffering is a mystery. In our home, Sofia was the mystery. Her birth was hard; we knew it at once. And so the questions came: Why a child so far outside the normal? Why this daughter who sometimes seemed to suffer, whom we had to feed by force to keep alive, who would strike her head until it bled, who drooled?
Making Her Life Bear Fruit
How could it be that our daughter was struck in what gives us human dignity: intelligence? It felt unbearable. Shortly after her birth, a friend said to me: "You know, if your daughter had been born in...they wouldn't have let her live." That sentence horrified me, shattered me. Sofia was a gift from God like our other children, and we had to fight with all our strength to make her life bear fruit.
That Man of Sorrows
It was an agonizing mystery to live with. Long years of loneliness, of isolation in a kind of tunnel, broken only by rare flashes of light—grace making its way, slowly. We had to keep living. I confess that reading the miracles of Jesus in the Gospel sometimes pained me. But I found peace reading and rereading Isaiah's "Suffering Servant." In my daughter's body—ravaged, sometimes disfigured—I recognized that "man of sorrows."
The Spirit Filled the Mystery
Little by little, Christ worked within us through the power of his Spirit. When Sofia turned nine, she was confirmed. The Holy Spirit then filled this mystery of a life with his presence. The mystery became Wisdom. The name we had given her at baptism revealed a depth we had to discover day by day, in all humility. It was meant to help us encounter the Lord of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are those who mourn...blessed are the poor in spirit." It was for us, then. We were living it fully. Yet it was never easy, not in our world, not in our family.
We Opened Ourselves
Then came Lourdes. Near Christ, his mother stands always in the first place. At Lourdes, Mary was waiting for us. We met other parents like ourselves. We opened ourselves to other suffering. Living our daughter's suffering so deeply in our own lives brought us to compassion. How many times I have wept, and still today it happens often when I am with mothers who suffer.
Called to Communion
At Lourdes we discovered Sofia in the Church: among others, it became possible at times to sing the Magnificat together. We felt then a call to communion, to solidarity.
These are not empty words. They mean commitment, and commitment changes your life. Suddenly we saw we had little time left for our own torment; we had to share; we had to bear witness to love in suffering. Our home, our arms opened wide.
God's Transparency
Toward the end of her life, Sofia drew many friends to her. Even this radiance was a mystery. She had become—or so I was told—"God's transparency." It was true. She had become a source of strength. Not without difficulty; we are parents like others, and there were doubts, anguish, tears from all of us. But looking back now, I can say that Sofia taught us how to live. She revealed God's presence to us in all things. She led us into the world of human suffering, but mysteriously also into the difficult discovery of God's Wisdom. Sofia "in her own way completed the suffering through which Christ brought about the redemption of the world."
But, my God, how hard it is to live through suffering, especially when it touches the flesh of our own flesh.
by Marie Francoise Heyndrickx, 1986
===FINE===