God Bless

The movie Awakenings tells a story of a doctor called Malcolm Sayer, who starts a new job at a mental hospital in the 1960's. It is a true story about how he comes to care for these patients. After a short time he notices a pattern in a particular group of patients, who seem to suffer all the same conditions and he discovers they have a condition called encephalitis lethargica that was known at that time as the "sleeping disease." In this sleeping disease, patients literally become completely asleep, comatose in a catatonic state and they are unresponsive in every way. Dr. Sayer ministers to them and tries to discover patterns in their behavior. In doing his research, the doctor discovers a then-new drug called L-Dopa, which had been designed for treating Parkinson's disease, could have potential benefits to his patients. So he ran a trial on one of these patients, Leonard Lowe, played by Robert DeNiro. Robin Williams, playing the part of Dr. Sayer increases heavier and heavier doses, eventually this new drug wakes up Leonard and he is completely alive. Having been in this catatonic, sleeping state for nearly 30 years, Leonard wakes up into a world that he does not know.

As Leonard relearns to live in this world, there is this phenomenal discovery of the value and the gift of life and during this process this bond develops between the doctor, Malcolm Sayer, and Leonard Lowe the character played by Robert DeNiro. Eventually, Dr. Sayer pleads with the patrons of the hospital to give him enough money to put all 15 onto this medication and so they do. And all 15 patients come out of their sleepiness and come alive. It is an incredible movie about how these people had lost decades of their life, lost massive components of the life but they are alive and well. They enjoy life completely and they value every single thing of life. Unfortunately they discover that the drug wears off and the awakening is temporary. Eventually L-Dopa no longer works and they return to their catatonic state.

It is a painful movie to watch because the joy of life that they sought to enjoy and recapture is lost because the benefit of the drug does not last. All the doctors struggle to understand what has happened. Dr. Sayer gives this speech to the patrons who have helped him finance the incredible high costs of this experiment and he says to his patrons, "Today we must face the reality of a miracle. We can hide behind a veil of science or we could say the drug has failed or that the patients could no longer handle the reality of having lost decades of their life. But in reality, we do not know what went wrong anymore than we know what went right to begin with." Then he adds, "There is one thing that we learned before this chemical window closed for them, there began another awakening but this awakening continues past the chemical window, this awakening is the awakening of the human spirit." He said, "For the human spirit is stronger than any chemical, stronger than any dose of any pharmaceutical component. The human spirit is now opened for these people. With it, they have shown us the value of life, that the value of life is with family, with friends, with laughter, with the simple joys of being able to go out and enjoy the outdoors. These are the things that matter. These are the things we have forgotten. The simplest things."

The hospital unit is transformed because now the nurses and doctors tend to these patients, not as catatonic individuals without personality but they tend to them as fellow human beings, who are hidden behind a state of sleepiness; fellow human beings trapped in illness.

I often wonder if we, as human beings, have not sometimes experienced a spiritual sleepiness and we occasionally wake ourselves up from this catatonic state and we come to church on Sunday, only to fall right back asleep on Sunday evening, or that we come here to these celebrations at Easter or Christmas and we find it a wonderful awakening only to fall back asleep on Monday morning after Easter.

You see, my friends, this celebration today and what the cross represents and what the resurrection represents is not, a temporary awakening; it is not a chemical awakening; it is for real. And a miracle exists in you and me. But we must be careful not to fall asleep, a spiritual sleepiness that can be cast over our society so easily; one in which we take the narcotics of society and put ourselves so quickly to sleep. We must resist the temptation of listening to the world that says sleepiness, spiritual sleepiness is better than being fully alive in the Spirit.

Today, of all days, we come to celebrate that Spirit. We come to say the Spirit is alive in you and I, and Christ is risen among us today and we are to stay awake with Him; to tend to that Spirit to enliven that Spirit within us through prayer and works of charity so that we do not fall asleep tomorrow or on Monday and then come back again next Sunday to briefly awaken ourselves to a moment of spiritual reality. We come here each Sunday instead to stay awake, to stay awake in the Spirit of Christ, who is risen. Today, let us not pretend that we have taken some chemical that will make us awaken for a moment, but instead realize that the same Spirit promised to the disciples is the same Spirit we hear about today : it is the same Spirit that is given to you and I; Christ is risen and He is alive in you and in me. Let us stay awake and tend to our spiritual self.