Looking to the Horizon

Dear Friends, 

Do you remember the bent over woman Jesus encountered in Luke 13:10-17? She was crippled by a spirit and had been completely incapable of standing erect for 18 years. 

When she first encountered Jesus, all this woman could see was the floor they stood on together. Jesus never mentioned that this apparently incurable bend in her body might be because of some sin on her part. No. It was caused by a spirit – something from her experiences, her world that had weighed her down ceaselessly.  

I have always loved the tenderness in Jesus as he spoke to this woman, touched her regardless of the spirit holding her in thrall. But I had never articulated her bent over state the ways Pope Francis did in a talk he gave in 2017. Pope Francis said of her that she could not see the horizon. She was bound to a limited view of the present. No faces. No eyes that speak volumes of grace and love. She could not see ahead or above. No sky. Nothing of beauty to strike her with awe. Jesus set this woman free to see but also to go where the horizon beckoned. Where did she go? What did she experience? We don’t know anything more about her. All we know is, without Jesus, there was no horizon. With him she could see and experience life in new, breathtaking ways.  

These two things: release from being bent over and exposure to the horizon continue to be the gift of God in our world today.  

I saw these gifts played out recently in a film that is blessed in my memory, a Japanese film called Perfect Days (2023). The viewer walked with 40-ish Hiroyama who had left the home of his affluent, abusive father who kept him psychologically bent over. Hiroyama made his way in life, found a place to live and became a toilet cleaner in Tokyo – an apparently menial position, but one he did with care and enthusiasm. Throughout the film, Hiroyama looked to the sky, to the trees, to the Tokyo Skytree Tower that dominates the city for his encouragement and inspiration. Each day, with its routines, he was inspired by the horizon. Through a series of vignettes, we see how he lived his days with joy, how he came to serenity and accepted the Holy in his life according to his Buddhist tradition.  

What about us? Are we bent over and see only the present in a limited way? Do we accept the call to stand up straight and look to the horizon to see and choose goodness in our lives, however we find it?  

Given the challenges of this fall season, do we pay attention to Jesus bending down to us in whatever bent over ways He finds us and do we hear Him say: “Beloved, stand up straight.”?

~ Sister Joan Sobala