My Disabled Son's Special Vocation: To Show People How To Love

April 2, 2013 Subscribe · Forward My Disabled Son's Special Vocation: To Show People How To Love "Small acts with great love," Mother Teresa was fond of saying. On Easter Sunday, Pope Francis bestowed an extraordinary Easter blessing upon my family when he performed such an act in embracing my son, Dominic, who has cerebral palsy. The embrace occurred when the pope spied my son while touring the Square, packed with a quarter million pilgrims, in the "pope mobile" after Mass. This tender moment, an encounter of a modern Francis with a modern Dominic (as most know, tradition holds that St. Francis and St. Dominic enjoyed an historic encounter), moved not only my family (we were all moved to tears), not only those in the immediate vicinity (many of whom were also brought to tears by it), not only by thousands who were watching on the big screens in the Square, but by the entire world. Images of this embrace quickly went viral, and by Easter Sunday afternoon it was the lead picture on the Drudge Report, with the caption, "Change Hatred into Love" (a paraphrase of Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi message that followed shortly thereafter), where it remains even as I write this. Fox News, NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightly News, and CNN all showed clips of it. Lead pictures of it were found in Le Figaro, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, inter alia. It is often difficult to try to express to people who do not have special needs children what kind of untold sacrifices are demanded of us each and every day. And as for Dominic, he has already shared in Christ's Cross more than I have throughout my entire life multiplied a thousand times over. What is the purpose in all this, I ask? Furthermore, I often tend to see my relationship with Dominic in a one-sided manner. Yes, he suffers more than me, but it's constantly ME who must help HIM. Which is how our culture often looks upon the disabled: as weak, needy individuals who depend so much upon others, and who contribute little, if anything, to those around them. Continue reading... Pat Robertson Says God Gives More Miracles To 'Simple' Foreigners Science, Catholicism And The Papacy In The New Millennium For World's Billionaires, Ending Extreme Poverty Is Cheap Westboro Tweets April Fools' Joke Cardinal Dolan: Church Could Be More Welcoming To Gays PHOTOS: Easter Celebrated Around The World 10 Lies Christians Believe About Interacting With the Opposite Sex Muslims Redefining Community 10 Lies Christians Believe About Interacting With the Opposite Sex Westboro Tweets April Fools' Joke Aaron's Sons, Ben Azzai And Marriage Equality TIMOTHY KUREK Lazy Religion Tackles Gay Marriage: With Liberty and Justice for Most Lazy religion doesn't think in terms of people; it thinks in terms of abstract theological concepts and issue based stereotypes. It politicizes unique and beautiful individuals made in the image of God. Continue reading... RODNEY L. TAYLOR, PH.D. Confucius Say, 'YOLO!' The goal is the fulfillment of a life of learning such that one comes to accord with the Way of Heaven, not in some eschatological point beyond life, but within one's life itself. And what of the afterlife? Simply of no concern and thus no articulation. Continue reading... DAVID J. DUNN, PHD The Triumph of Orthodoxy: Why We Kiss Pictures Like the cloak of Jesus, we do not think the object as divine. Rather, we call them "windows" to heaven, because we encounter Jesus through material objects. Continue reading... PETER A. GEORGESCU Pray for Strength to Choose I've always believed that when you pray for God's will, you are praying simply for the strength and wisdom to choose what God would want you to choose. In other words, you aren't praying for God to intervene in this world. You're praying to enable yourself to do what God would have you do. Continue reading... PIERRE WHALON A Memoir of Babylon, 10 Years Later The unintended consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom will have to be endured by us all for a very long time. Ten years after, it is still as if we are just getting started. Continue reading... Received this from a friend? Sign up for alerts from The Huffington Post here. Unsubscribe here. Huffington Post, 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003