PRAYERS FOR A YOUNG BOY WITH A DISABLED LEFT LEG LIKE ME.............

On Priesthood Sunday USA October 27, after concelebrating the 9:30 a.m. Mass, I was in the sacristry of Sacred Heart Church awaiting the start of the 11 a.m. Mass, when a young boy with a slight speech defect walked in and asked me how my prosthetic leg felt.  He eagerly wanted to know about it and soon volunteered he his left leg is turned outward, just as mine has been from birth.  He told me that he was having a surgery on his leg.  When I asked him how soon his mother told me over the ThanksGiving break.  When I said my left leg is like his is turned outward, he wanted to know if I had my leg operated on.  I said no I  didn't and told him at his age the surgery he is having this weekend, will likely make his leg straight.  I am thinking and praying for him and his family this week and ask you to remember him in your prayers too.  It was an encounter I will cherish always.  As he and his mother left the sacristy last month, I watched as  he animatedly told his mother about seeing and talking to me.  All because of the witness value of my being there in a wheelchair and the ability in him to identify and relate to me as a disabled priest.  Whereas some persons now perceive me as a tarnished commodity and a burden,  among them at least a few colleagues and superiors; the disabled and a resounding number of enlightened and inclusive persons, welcome and affirm my continuing priestly ministry from the accommodation of a wheelchair.  Ihope to see, encorage, affirm, witness, and minister, to that disabled boy and many more of the People of God, the Lord called me and the Diocese of Sacramento ordained me to the Priesthood of Jesus Christ to carry out.  For as the Pastoral Statement of the U.S. Bishops on Persons With Disabilities 1978; and the National Catholic Partnership for Disability founded from it in 1982 proclaim, "There Is No Separate Church For the Disabled".............Fr.  Troy David