I’d like to share an experience I had this past year in my medical practice, of a beautiful encounter with a patient who came to see me in my eye clinic. She had just lost vision in both of her eyes to the point where she could no longer drive her car or read...not an unusual presentation really... but what would follow would be a surprise to me and a great gift. The woman would ultimately make an extraordinary statement of faith. And it wouldn’t be just what she said to me, but it would be the way she would say it, and the way she would look at me when she said it, that would make it so unforgettable.

When I saw her in the clinic that day she explained that she had to recruit a friend to drive her in that day. She was a a widow, living alone, a very bright and independent lady, and an avid reader. She explained how badly she missed reading and how she feared permanently losing her independence. I could see from the data collected by my technician that her vision certainly was below the legal level for driving and that her vision was not able to be improved with lenses for either distance or for near vision. In the medical record, the patient’s chief complaint read something like this: “The patient hopes that by updating her glasses prescription or by some type of eye procedure that she will be able to drive and to read again.”

After completing her exam, I realized there would be no possibility of improving her vision with glasses or with any kind of treatment or procedure. She would not ever drive again or ever read again with any ease. As I gathered myself to address her, I remember how she looked at me with so much hope in her eyes, poised with great eagerness to hear my final assessment and for the news of what I might be able to do for her. I braced myself for her reaction, for how devastated I thought she would be by what I was about to tell her. With as much tenderness and compassion as I could muster, I explained the situation to her and I waited for her response. Unexpectedly, her look of hopefulness changed so quickly to one of acceptance. Her heart had shifted, and so fast. Having sensed the sadness in my delivery of the dismal news, she surprised me again. She looked at me with such compassion, and with an effort to help me really, she explained that she is a woman of faith and said to me, “I believe affliction is our teacher”. And she went on to quote a passage from Isaiah from memory. Here it is:

Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.(Is. 30:20)

As we are reminded of so often in our Schools of Community, God has a method to bring us to maturity. My patient gave me what I was not expecting, a beautiful testimony to the truth of this method, acknowledging in her own way that everything is given, nothing is wasted, that all of reality is for us in some way, never against us. As Fr. Giussani puts it in Christ, God's Companionship with Man, “I open my eyes to this reality which imposes itself upon me, which does not depend on me, but upon which I depend, it is the great conditioning of my existence.” My patient, confronted with a new depth of dependence and powerlessness, did not despair, but instead witnessed to the importance of that awareness that is needed to travel a truly human journey, what Fr. Giussani calls a place of solitude, the discovery that “a fundamental problem of ours cannot find its solution in us or in others.” My patient understood that she would not find the ultimate answer to her predicament in herself, or in me, or in anyone else, but only in Christ who she recognized as the Teacher in that passage from Isaiah. Because of the fact of the Incarnation, God no longer hides himself, but remains an inescapable presence.

In that moment in my office, that woman witnessed to me a great depth of faith and I’m so grateful to her. The eternal Word took on a human face, and He shows His face today. Fr. Giussani, speaking of Mary’s great capacity to adhere to the Mystery, of her great freedom before the Angel Gabriel’s announcement, explains that after the angel departed from her, finding herself in a state of solitude in front of her circumstances, despite everything, Mary clung to God’s method. In this context Fr. Giussani teaches us that faith is “precisely that strength, full of attention with which the soul adheres to the sign that God has used, and clings steadfastly to this sign, despite everything.” My patient showed me something of this strength, so full of attention to God’s method, and by it she was Christ to me, a Teacher to me, giving me a memorable sign, a sign for me to cling to in times of adversity and affliction.