Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed

13 Dec Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed

I grew up in Locati, Italy, a small village in the province of Palermo, Sicily. When I was a young boy, we had an annual tradition for the feast day of St. Lucia on December 13th. The night before, children in the village would collect firewood, and build a fire in the square around which many people would gather and pray. The street we lived at, our house was next door to my grandmother one, in front of which she had a small hut with a firewood oven, where many other women would come to bake the homemade bread for the entire week. In the occasion of the feast, the same night of the fire, my mother and other people living close by, being the oven still very warm, would put in to cook the“cuccìa”, a Sicilian dish made mainly with wheatberries. The dish commemorates relief from a food shortage in the region with the unexpected arrival of a cargo of wheat, which arrived in the port of Siragusa, where all the people thanked and attribute St. Lucia’s for the miracle of the arrival of the ship full of wheat, and since they were starving for days and not having the time to transform it to flour and then bread, they decided to cook it raw and so the ate in abundance and every year they honored the Saint with the same meal. So the story goes! Between this annual tradition and my name, Lucio, St. Lucia understandably became my patron saint.

 I always invoked St. Lucia to pray for me, but one day I needed her prayers more than I ever had before.

In 1978, 10 years after my family and I immigrated to the United States, I was trying to unclog the kitchen sink from some debris. I tried using the plunger relentlessly but had no luck, so I decided to pour some drain cleaner down the pipe. I thought for sure this would work, but 2-3 hours later, I checked—and still, nothing! Thus, I decided to use the plunger again and as soon as I did, the water with the drain cleaner shot back up and hit my face and burned especially my left eye, without having the time to close it.

Immediately, besides the pain, when I tried to open my eye under the running water, all I could see was opaque white, and bring my hand to the eye, with my other one I started to see white material coming out of it. I tried to wash again and again while I was screaming with pain, but after a few minutes everything went dark and I could no longer see with my left eye. I immediately cried out to St. Lucia for help, as she is not only my patron saint but the patron saint of the blind. My whole family and I ran over to the local church to pray and after I shared my dilemma with the priest, he sent me to see an optometrist next street over. The optometrist immediately put some drops in it, to stop the burning and advised us to go to see an ophthalmologist at the University of Illinois. Unfortunately, the specialist didn’t have any medication or treatment to bring my eyesight back. However, he said there was a new experimental substance in its trial stage they could try, which used polymers and natural cells. The drain cleaner had destroyed two-thirds of my cornea, so there were no guarantees.

My family’s and my prayers to St. Lucia became fervent. So, I promised Saint Lucia, that if she helped me, I would celebrate her feast every year and raise money for the poor for as long as God would give me life.

For the next several months, I returned to the hospital three times a week to be given drops in my left eye, and each time my family and I invoked St. Lucia. Finally, after six months, I started to see opaque white again and gradually regained my eyesight in my left eye after about 8 months or so. Can you believe I regained 20/20 vision? I never even had to wear glasses. It was truly a miracle!

I moved back to Italy with my family a few years later and lived there for 11 years, always remembering to venerate St. Lucia. When I returned to the United States in 1993, I joined a church, Our Lady of Pompeii, where I proposed to the priest to do something to commemorate and start a feast in honor of St. Lucia. So my wife and I started making “cuccìa” for her feast day on December 13th. We invited all the parishioners to join us in the celebration and any donations we received we gave to the poor and to a charity for the blind.

Soon we found that there were others who loved St. Lucia, and who wanted to help in cooking to help raise money on her feast day. Through this tradition of baking in her honor, many were blessed and learned about the life of St. Lucia, the saint of light, the eyesight and the light of our souls, and invoked her to help with their troubles. One parishioner’s grandchild had impaired eyesight. She was coming to help for the feast invoking St. Lucia and after some time, he gained back his eyesight in full. There was another parishioner who asked St. Lucia to find her soulmate. After two years, she was married in the church. So many other miracles and stories came about from this annual ritual. I cannot ever pray, or thank Her enough because I am so certain and believe that through the intercession of St. Lucia, I got my miracle. Thus, I promised Her that until God continues to give me strength, I will honor Her with the celebration of the feast, and hope that the younger generation will continue the tradition of baking “cuccìa” as long as possible. Viva St. Lucia. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.

Dr. Lucio Barbarotta

Chicago, Illinois