By Wendy Kachermeyer
Director of Religious Education

Wendy Kachermeyer

Blindness isn’t always the physical absents of sight. It can be a darkness which holds our souls from knowing the truth about God’s presence in our lives and the world. We have so many outside interruptions that keep us from recognizing Jesus right before our eyes.

We have all the gadgets the mind can imagine to communicate with someone across the world in an instant. We, without realizing it are shutting God right out of our hearts and minds because we are so engrossed with what we are holding in our hand. We are always looking down and never gazing up to heaven. Without looking to God what happens when His light in us is fading? Our world can become very dark and in that darkness we become blind to our dear Jesus who gave us everything with His life.

Our union with Jesus during Lent can lead us to a light that will never burnout. Jesus can shake us out of our blindness to Him. We need this light to truthfully live for our God in this world.

There was a time in my life in which I was so blind through my own choice. I was angry with God because He brought my Mother home with Him when I was becoming a teenager. I stopped praying on the regular basis, stopped going to Mass and decided there couldn’t be any such thing as God because a good God would never take a Mom away from her children. It didn’t take any effort to just stop and live life without holiness. Fourteen years later I found myself with a life that I never expected to have. I had a wonderful loving husband, two children, a house, a new car and a spunky cocker spaniel, I didn’t need for any material thing in my life. But I had emptiness that no matter what new gadget or how much money I would spend could be filled, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.

One day my wonderful sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, asked me if I wanted to get my children baptized because she was getting her children baptized. I said, “What do we have to do to get this done.” We had to go to a welcoming meeting at Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Church. The people on that committee noticed we never received the Sacrament of Confirmation and sent us to the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults team (Catechumenate team).

In the beginning I attended RCIA sessions just to get my children baptized. Well, you know how the Holy Spirit can work on someone who is so broken, I went to Confession…after 25 years of not practicing my faith and blaming God for so much, I had a lot to acknowledge. It took a while to relieve my soul of the black I was carrying within it. After I heard the words of absolution and said an act of contrition, which I had forgotten but was truly sorry and repentant for all of my evil, then I knelt down in the pew to start my enormous penance I noticed my heart felt like there was a space or hollow spot inside. It took some time before I realized what that was. It was my soul without the darkness of sin! I filled that hollow with Christ and His Church and I am never going to stop.

The blindness is a heavy burden to carry around and it is difficult to let go of its attraction. Removing the blinders and looking at the light can’t happen without covering your eyes and slowly letting the rays consume your being. Once it happens you will never want to go back to living in that hideous black.

This Lent get rid of your blindness and let in the light by going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Wendy Kachermeyer is Director of Religious Education and R.C.I.A (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, Dunkirk, NY