Act 5:12-16
Revelation 1:9-11a,
12-13, 17-19
John 20:19-31
This past Tuesday was Autism Awareness Day. In fact, the entire month of April is Autism
Awareness Month.
Last month at St. James Cathedral, Archbishop
Peter Sartain held a Mass for all those with Special Needs throughout the Archdiocese
in Western Washington, including those with autism.
What does all this have to do with today’s Second Sunday of Easter or Divine
Mercy Sunday? Well, allow me to show
you.
There are many Doubting Thomases in our world
today. To them, the resurrected Christ
is nothing, but a myth. You may have a
few of these people in your family. I
know I do.
But what if I were to show a modern day example of
God’s abundance of divine mercy?
What if I were to share the story of a young lady
with autism and show how God revealed His divine mercy in her suffering and
her pain and her transcendence?
This is the Good News about Carly Fleischmann. She’s a twin who was born in Toronto,
Canada. Doctors told her parents Carly
would always be developmentally delayed.
In fact, doctors said Carly always would have the mind of a six year old. In short, she would always
be lost in her own world.
For the first eleven years of her life, Carly’s
parents only knew her by her shrieks, her constant rocking, her flailing arms, her
pounding of her head on the floor, her temper tantrums, her agony.
Carly was never able to speak a word or connect to
the world around her. It was painful for
her parents to watch.
Friends told her parents Arthur and Tammy to put
Carly in an institution. Lock her and
her painful daily struggles away, out of sight, out of mind.
But her parents refused. Her father saying, “How can you give up your
kid?”
Instead, they put her in daily therapy sessions
with specialists in a desperate attempt to rewire Carly’s brain. To make a connection.
Her parents said they could look into Carly’s eyes
and see innate intelligence.
So, for 40-60 hours a week, Carly had intensive,
one-on-one therapy with three or four therapists. The costs would soar into the tens upon tens
of thousands of dollars.
Her doctors told her parents they would do their
best to help Carly to function better in the world around her. But even they had little hope of a normal
life.
Years went by and little or no progress. Just the same temper tantrums, pounding of
her head on the floor, rocking back and forth, flailing arms, shrieks and shouts
of anguish.
It was almost too painful to bear.
But her parents never gave up.
Then one day during a therapy session at home,
Carly walked up to the family computer and struggled to spell out two
words. The first word: h-u-r-t (hurt). The second word: h-e-l-p (help).
Then she ran away from the computer, hid behind the
couch and threw up.
The shadow of Peter fell on Carly that day and a miraculous
breakthrough happened. Carly had a voice.
Therapists started to work with Carly on using her
words, employing tough-love tactics. After
agonizing months of consistent prodding, Carly began to communicate. Slowly at first, but eventually, Carly was
communicating in full sentences, one letter at a time, “with fluency no one
could believe.”
And what she said was remarkable.
Here’s just a sample:
“I am
autistic. But that is not who I am. Take time to know me before you judge me.”
What this told doctors and her parents was there
was a lot more going on inside of Carly than they ever knew. “She started to realize that by
communicating, she had power over her environment, ” one doctor said.
And Carly could be quite profound. She wrote:
“I think a
lot of people get their information from so-called experts, but if a horse is
sick, you don’t ask a fish what’s wrong with the horse. You go right to the horse’s mouth.”
Through her words, Carly would explain her wild
behavior like banging her head and flailing her arms. She wrote:
“It’s a
way for us to drown out all sensory input that overloads us all at once. We create output to block out the input. Because if I don’t… it feels like my body is
going to explode. If I could I would
stop it, but it’s not like turning a switch off… it’s like I have a fight with
my brain over it.”
And Carly expressed her inner most hopes and dreams
for herself:
“I want to
be able to go to school with normal kids, but not have them getting upset, or
scared if I hit a table or scream. I
want to be like every other kid, but I can’t because I am Carly.”
For years, her parents had spoken in front of Carly
like she wasn’t there. Clearly she was
there all the time. That innate
intelligence they perceived was soaking in all of it.
This opened new doors of communication between
daughter and parents with astounding results.
Now, she loves to have online conversations with
her mom and dad during their days at work.
And like any teenage girl, Carly, now 17, asks for the usual things.
Finally, a father gets to truly meet the daughter
he never knew and his life is changed forever.
A mother gets to bond over conversations about boys and dating and her life is changed forever. And a twin sister gets to witness who her sister really is.
Carly’s dad Arthur said, “I stopped looking at her
as a disabled person, and started to look at her as a sassy, mischievous
teenage girl.”
Her dad says Carly would like the world to see her
as a normal child locked in a body that does things she has no control over.
She wrote her dad something recently that will
likely bring a tear to your eye.
“Dear
Dad: I like when you read to me. And I love that you believe in me.
I know I’m not the easiest kid in the world. However, you are always there for me, holding
my hand and picking me up. I love you.”
Arthur said, “I’ll go through many sleepless nights
to hear that. I’ll spend every penny we
have to hear that.”
As we heard in today’s first reading from Acts of
the Apostles, “many signs and wonders were done among the people” so they
would believe in the Risen Christ.
Carly is now happier. Calmer.
More independent. She still
cannot speak, but has found a voice, typing with one finger one letter at a
time.
In Revelation we heard a heavenly voice tell John, “Write
down, therefore, what you have seen, and what is happening, and what will
happen afterwards.”
Carly just finished a book called, “Carly’s Voice: Breaking Through Autism,” co-authored by
her father. Carly did most of the
writing.
Carly now attends mainstream high school where she
takes advanced and gifted classes. Her
IQ has been confirmed to exceed 120. She
now dreams of going to college.
The divine mercy of God can silence even the
doubting Thomases of our world. And turn
unbelief into belief in our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who makes all
things new again.
Her dad says, “I think Carly knows she now has a
voice that can help other kids. Now she
looks at herself as someone who can make a mark on the world.”
Carly has her own blog and is on Twitter, answering
people’s questions from all over North America.
To one autistic person she wrote: “I think the only thing I can say is don’t
give up. Your inner voice will find its way out. Mine did.”
Carly now attends mainstream high school where she
takes advanced and gifted classes. Her
IQ has been confirmed to exceed 120. She
now dreams of going to college.
As we heard in John’s Gospel today, Jesus tell His
disciples, “Peace be with you.” Carly is experiencing that peace now.
The divine mercy of God can silence even the
doubting Thomases of our world. And turn
unbelief into belief in our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who makes all
things new again. 
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