"I Tried to Speak, to Tell Him Something, but I Couldn't: The Emotion Was Too Strong. It All Lasted Not More Than a Minute, but It Seemed an Eternity."

The Anchoress brings us to this story found on CNN's Belief Blog:

"I tried to speak, to tell him something, but I couldn't: The emotion was too strong," says Vinicio Riva, the disfigured man embraced by Pope Francis in images that went viral.

"It all lasted not more than a minute, but it seemed an eternity," Riva told the Italian magazine Panorama this weekend.

Riva, whose body is covered with tumors due to a rare disease, said his unusual appearance has led to a lifetime of living on the margins.

That is, until he showed up at St. Peter's Square on November 6.

You should go read it all, it's short but riveting.

There' so much I want to say about it, about how this Pope touched a disfigured man and about how that represents something so much larger, so much more meaningful, even personal.

But no one can say it like The Anchoress can:

Pondering of all of this in the light of our broken, disfigured souls, we may literally tremble. I know I do. As physically unattractive as I am, it is my interior ugliness that often makes me feel repellent — to myself, to God, to the world — and it is the greater weight I drag as I wander the peripheries and wonder how much love I dare lay claim to.

And yet. . .here is hope, even for one as damaged and ghastly as I, in all my dark sins. This moment between Francis and Vinicio is just a small revelation of the love we are promised in the light of Christ. If this tiny apocalypse of pure love has us entranced and moved, what might the whole glory of it be were we to permit an unrestricted Christ-kiss to our souls?

We can’t even imagine it without becoming a little breathless, and yes, overwhelmed. It is promised to us. Dare we believe that with our whole hearts, and let it draw us into revelation?

Yes, there's more.  Not just over at The Anchoress' place.  But in that place so many of us are afraid to visit, that place where we acknowledge that we are needy and that nothing in this world can fit that need.  Nothing.

Ponder it.  

Know that we are called to go where we'd rather not.  Know that we're supposed to experience that which was experienced by Vinicio Riva and more.

Yes, it's possible and though we'll not know it fully this side of heaven, we'll come to know it enough to know, and to trust, in the promise that awaits us.

And that will heal us.  Fully.

Carry on.