Two years ago, I sleepily walked to the sink to rinse my face after getting out of bed. I looked in the mirror, and to my surprise, there was a sizable yellow spot on the white of my eye. Having no idea what it was, I made an appointment with an ophthalmologist.
“Do you spend a lot of time in the sun or at the beach without sunglasses?” she asked. “No, I replied.” “Do you ski a lot?” she inquired. “Not at all,” I said.
“Your eyes are severely dry and inflamed. I think you should see a rheumatologist,” she said. “I think you might have Sjögren’s disease.”
A few months later, a rheumatologist confirmed her suspicions.
I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, which attacks my exocrine glands. In layman’s terms, anywhere my body is supposed to have moisture, I have little to none.
It’s unclear how long I’ve had the disease. Until that appointment, I’d lived my whole life assuming that I was sensitive to things like weather and toiletries, and that some amount of arthritis, swollen joints, and neuropathy was typical, based on my family history. It turns out I have a high pain tolerance.
Like other autoimmune diseases, I experience what doctors call flares — the sudden onset of symptoms that range from inflamed hands, knees, and feet, to complications with any of the body’s systems and organs. People with this disease are at an increased risk for lymphoma as well as other autoimmune diseases like lupus.
There’s no way of predicting when or why your body will take a sudden turn in a downward direction. I am now among those who live scan to scan and blood draw to blood draw. It’s a radical invitation to live in the present moment.
At the same time, I’ve got a family to serve, and I’m not one to idly sit around if something can be done. I’ve taken to overhauling my diet in order to reduce the inflammation in my body and improve my health outcomes.
Thanks in part to figures like Dr. Casey Means, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and others, the public now has a better understanding of the inflammatory — and sometimes poisonous — ingredients we’re ingesting en masse. A theologian more capable than I could delineate how our current means of food and agricultural production should be counted among Pope Francis’ running list of social and structural sins.
In the age of Google, YouTube, and podcasts, one can easily despair from information overload. At times I’ve been paralyzed about what to eat and how to find time (or money) to make the bulk of our family’s food from scratch. I confess to becoming overly preoccupied with swapping healthy cooking oils for ones that do not, for checking every ingredient list at the grocery store. It’s been astonishingly easy to become consumed by it.
Despite my efforts, my symptoms have not gone away. In fact, the disease has flared without warning, rendering me not quite immobile, but close to it.
During a recent, demoralizing episode, I was leaning on my dresser for support as I put my clothes on. I looked up and saw a small bottle of St. Joseph oil that I had purchased on a pilgrimage with my late mother to St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal.
Thousands of sick pilgrims were healed during their visits with St. André Besette at the site he commissioned to honor St. Joseph. To this day, visitors report being cured of their diseases after going to the basilica.
Bessette encouraged pilgrims to take home vegetable oil which had been burned in front of a statue of Joseph. He instructed them to rub it on themselves and to ask Joseph for relief, cautioning them that it was not the oil that healed, but Jesus Christ.
After I got dressed that day, I rummaged through my drawers and realized that I had accumulated not only eight bottles of that oil — some from my late mother’s bedside, some from my husband who had traveled there before we were married — but that I had vials of oil from other shrines I’d been to in my life.
Around that same time, a good friend stopped by with her kids for a playdate with mine. After I mentioned my illness, she ran into her car and came back with a tiny bottle of St. Faustina oil from a local shrine. “Let me know if you need an oil change,” she said,” I’ve got plenty more.”
I had been so focused on healthy oils that I had forgotten about holy ones.
In the Catholic tradition, oils serve a variety of purposes. There are holy oils used in the sacraments — the oil of the sick, the oil of catechumens, and chrism oil. We believe that God himself confers his grace through their application.
But the Church also permits the use of blessed oils. Like other sacramentals, they are intended to increase our faith. As with ashes, palms, and holy water, they remind us of God’s closeness to us.
Our Lord has worked wonders through this simple gift of nature, anointing kings, providing light for the Maccabees, receiving it as a baby in the manger, and again from Mary of Bethany before his passion.
I’ve begun to take a drop or two of these oils and rub them on my cracked hands and fingers, my eyes, and my joints when I am praying in the morning and before I go to bed. I ask for God’s healing and consolation, but also help to make an offering of my discomfort for others. The practice has helped me to do what I can, and leave the rest to him.
It’s not lost on me that my disease presented itself most clearly in my eyes, and that through it, God is helping me to see — chiefly that in physical or spiritual dryness, he is closer than I can imagine, through the simplest of gifts.
Source: Angelus News