Daily Seasonal Reflections
Friday of the Second Week of Advent
The Solemnity of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr
Fr. Trey Nelson
 
 
“Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, ‘If you would hearken to my commandments,
 your prosperity would be like a river, and your vindication like the waves of the sea;  Your descendants would be like the sand.’” (From Isaiah 48:17-19)
  
Apart from her being martyred at Syracuse in 304 AD during the persecution of Diocletian, there is very little certain known about Lucy. I recommend that you find a reliable source, if you would like to read about her life.  I suggest this, rather than including it here, because she was victimized in many ways, and her last days were extremely violent.  The short of it is, she was the member of a wealthy family. She turned down proposal after proposal of marriage to pagan men. After one of her rejections, it was ordered that she be put to death.  “Santa Lucia” is an amazingly popular song to this day.  Lucy’s name, from “lux,” means “light.”   She has been celebrated as the patron of those who are blind or visually impaired.
 
I know I have shared with you in past seasonal reflections that our mother suffered for the last several years of her life with glaucoma.  All that I know about this condition, we learned from her. One of the things she told us was that the condition cannot be reversed, only slowed down. This is done, mainly, by regular doctor visits and taking eyedrops every day.  Very expensive eyedrops, as in, $120.00 per bottle.   I always say that, if I could have given our Mom anything in the world, it would have been her vision. To this day, it still makes me somewhat sad to know that she had to endure this for so many years.
 
However—and this is a BIG however—that never stopped her. She remained happy and always excited to see and be with us.  No, she could not read the newspaper any more.   She found it pretty much impossible to read her own recipes.  She was an excellent cook and always loved cooking and preparing for others.  And, almost worst of all, it was very difficult for her to see the LSU Tigers clearly when she watched them play football on TV.  She would literally pull her chair up to the screen and sit a foot or so away.  That never, I mean never stopped her from yelling and cheering. She used to have one of those old, hand-held school bells. Whenever LSU would score, she—or one of the grandchildren—would take the bell outside and ring it loudly for the neighbors to hear. One Christmas, she gave each of us a bell like that one.  “Mimi’s bell,” as we called it, still rings loudly in all our homes during football season.
 
Several years ago here at Saint Jude, our school adopted Jesse Manibusan’s “Open My Eyes” as our school song. If you are not familiar with it, I strongly recommend that you listen to it. We sing it during every school Mass, immediately following communion. On this Feast of Saint Lucy, let us all pause for a moment and offer a prayer for those who are visually impaired.  Let us also pray for ourselves—and for all others—that our eyes, minds, and hearts would not “become impaired” to seeing the goodness in those around us, especially the needy.
 
Saint Lucy, pray for us.
 
All of us.