Sunday Readings

Healing Cure

We all know what it is like to make an appointment with a doctor. There is usually at least one concrete issue we bring to him and his skills. We go to a doctor to find a cure for what is wrong with us. And we hope to walk out of the office with a prescription or a plan of action. Often times we do not. No one likes to hear the words: “we have to do a few more tests.”

But isn’t that often the case? We cannot always solve our problem with a pill or a potion. We do not relish months of physical therapy or complete lifestyle changes especially when we believe there is a magic answer to what is wrong. There is nothing wrong with that. Suffering – big or small – is not a good thing. It is completely normal and natural to avoid it. Still, we have to make a distinction for ourselves and understand the difference between “being cured” and “being healed.”

The Gospel today speaks of both. The paralytic is cured of his infirmity. We can even say today that his cure was a miracle. In other words, it was instant, complete, and without explanation. Throughout Scripture and the history of our faith, miraculous cures are everywhere. We see them under a tent with an evangelist screaming in the power of Jesus’ name. We see them in the marvels of modern medicine that move with the re-creating power of God’s wisdom. We know by faith that our prayers for the sick can be answered. So whether through the intercession of saints or in the healing waters of Lourdes, miracles abound. Like the paralytic’s friends, we bring each other in prayer to the feet of Jesus. We witness the power of God as He cures sickness within us and among us.

But please note, the first thing Jesus does for him is to forgive his sins. Imagine after going through all that trouble to get him through the crowds and down to the roof - this is what happens. They must’ve looked at each other and asked themselves if they went through all this for that. Was Jesus playing games with them?

Not at all. Jesus is more than a wonderworker who pulls out a few dazzling tricks to impress the crowds. He is the realization of the promise we hear in the first reading that our God would heal us. Yes, this would include a miraculous cure sandwiched between our deepest spiritual need and our deepest emotional need. Spiritually, we are paralyzed by the sins we commit and the effects that linger long after absolution. Emotionally, our mistakes send us wandering far from where we know we belong. Jesus forgives the paralytic, cures him, and tells him to go home. This is more than clearing the pipes; it is a full tune-up.

There’s no question of the connection between the mind and the body. Throughout the wisdom literature of the Old Testament we see a connection between living rightly and living long. Ancient and modern science confirms this. But sometimes being sick is just being sick. Viruses are not personally interested in how happy we feel but they certainly can thrive in a body worn out and run down. And sadly, many believe (wrongly) that every illness is a punishment from God for personal mistake. Actually, that’s a very sick idea of God. A proper understanding of the human condition in light of God’s revelation points to something more comprehensive than the vindictive God who occasionally breaks his own laws and cures people. No, our God understands (better than we ourselves) how much our falling human nature (and even our fallen human bodies) needs healing, renewal, and refreshment. Modern folks call this “wellness.” Catholics call it “Lent.”

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. Spring is teasing us with occasional warm temperatures and even the sound of chirping birds. And as we slowly begin to see a healing of sorts of the wounds of a cold and icy winter, we take the yearly opportunity to evaluate the health of our soul. All that we do over the coming weeks is to bring ourselves before the One who desires our healing. Over time we pay the price for living too fast and too far from what God intended. The body is a temple but too often we treat it like a honky-tonk. It needs – we need – an extreme makeover.

In any home makeover, and any medical treatment, there are two tools. The first removes the problem and the second builds the solution. We have to clear out to build up. That is why the Christian practice in the Lenten season is double-edged: we give up to purify and take on to sanctify. Giving things up by itself is a virtuous exercise in self-control and self-mastery. Taking on works of charity it is a commendable expression of our Christian vocation to apostolic charity. In Lent, we practice them both in order to open ourselves to the healing, forgiveness, and restoration of God’s grace. It is the desire of our Divine healer that we be healed as well as cured of our sins.

Perhaps we can leave with one question in these few days before the beginning of Lent. Are the things we give up and take on over these next few weeks bringing us closer to Jesus? By faith and hope, do we look for healing even more than for relief? The glory of these 40 days is the realization of God’s promise that we who all too easily forget how near God is to us find in Him the restoration of His grace. Give up what you should and take on what you can - but only if it brings you to the feet of the Divine Physician who calls you His child, his brother or sister. Rise from your sins and mistakes and head home to the Father who waits for your return.

Sunday Readings

Lepers Restored

You know, most people are decent human beings. Some would say that there is little good to be found among the members of the human race. That’s just plain cynical. No, we’re not always nice to one another, but when things get tough, we do all right. Today’s image of the leper is a good example. We feel sorry for the poor guy, we wish things were different, and we hope never to treat anyone like an outcast. In the ancient world, they didn’t know about science like we do and they strictly enforced quarantine when they were afraid. We can apply the image of the leper to people who have AIDS, mental illness, and any distressing condition that makes us uncomfortable. And as we do that, we demonstrate to ourselves how decent and how compassionate we can be. There are many heroes today who embraced the leper and gave us an example of what Christian charity is supposed to be.

What does it mean to be an outcast? It means to be separated from what is normal and what is popular. And as easily as we can identify those who can be considered outcasts, we are called not to pity as much as to identification. We are all, in a certain sense, outcasts.

There really are not too many people around who can go through life without ever having made a mistake. We are the result of the choices that we -- and others --make. We’re not victims; we are the results. Whether by decision or circumstances, none of us is ever in the place exactly where we want to be. We all deal with the consequences of the good and the bad we have chosen and completed. Visible or not, we share the leper’s status. We exclude ourselves because of what we’ve done or failed to do. We are sometimes excluded because of who we are.

Now it will be easy to stop there and just lament that no one is perfect and that’s just the way it is. But what if there was something different? What if the burden of the past and the sad expectation of the future found resolution by some sort of miracle?

That is precisely what Jesus Christ offers to each one of us. Just as he did today in the Gospel, he looks upon us with compassion and is moved by that compassion to restore us. While the physical healing no doubt was of benefit to the leper, the greater healing was his restoration. Lepers, in the simplicity of medical understanding, had to be quarantined for the good of the community. The proof of healing was to have a priest declare the leper healed and thus restored back to the community. His illness was bad; his isolation far worse. It is this dramatic restoration that we experience in God’s grace every time we approach him – especially in the sacrament of confession. It is for good reason that this sacrament is also called reconciliation. It reconciles us not just to God and the community of the Church, but also to ourselves.

Hope is a heavy burden for those who are weak. It takes strength to see beyond the limits and limitations of our fallen human nature. Reconciliation is the strength of grace that lifts us up. It reconciles us to what God intended for us rather than what we rejected for ourselves. Our guilt – valid or not – excludes us from our vocation to be holy. The scars of our past defeats become our leper’s bell ringing out its sad “unclean, unclean.”

And Jesus stretches out His hand and says, “be made clean.” And in this moment of grace, all that is wrong is made right. All that is right is sanctified. We are created in the image of God and by his own hand, we are re-created to that image once again. This is the beauty of God and it is a beauty He gives to each one of us.

We Americans spend a great deal of time and a good deal of money decorating and renovating our homes and offices. We like things to be nice. There’s nothing wrong with that. But how about our souls? How about the eternal dwelling place of God most high within us? Do we renovate our hearts? It is going to the Lent once again when we will ask this question more seriously. But it is a question we need to ask long before the ashes and the purple. Our exclusion from hope runs deep whether others can see it or not. We can stay in sadness or we can reach out to the Lord. His grace reaches out to us each time we come to this Sacrament With the same gentle and mighty hand he reached out to the leper. Are we worthy of it? No, but that never stopped Jesus. It never does.

On this threshold to the Lenten season, ask the Lord to remove fear and shame so you may know healing. Regardless of where you think you are or should be, know that Jesus is there. Have no fear before him. He went out to meet you before you even knew you were heading towards him.

And he meets you here again today.

Sunday Readings
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Weary Not

So, are you tired of this winter by now? I’m sure many of you, if not most of you, will give a resounding “yes” to this question. A good number of you will even laugh at the inconvenience and discomfort this cold, icy, and wet winter has brought us already. Others will not laugh. But we all know, regardless of the prognostications of certain rodents, that spring is around the corner. Yes, it’s a cold corner but it is a corner nonetheless. We may tire of things like winter, but only the dramatic would say they are truly in weary of it.

To be weary of something is far more than to be just bored or exhausted. Job knows what it is. In the first reading, he laments the pointlessness and hopelessness he sees only because of the physical and emotional pain he is in. From that dark place he can only see an unending succession of days that added up, mean nothing. He sees himself as nothing more than a cog in the great machine of the universe.

Now here is the interesting thing: there is no condemnation for him. God does not hand him a Bible and order him to be cheerful. There is no righteous figure encouraging him to think positively and look on the sunny side of things. Instead, we hear the painful cry of someone who is weary. Let’s use a good working definition of that term as: “exhaustion without vision.” To someone weary of all the changes and chances of life, Job can speak for them. To someone who can see nothing more than the daily routine, no one is called or has a right to aim for anything higher.

And then we hear of Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law and then crowds who gather around him and demand from Him. So Jesus escapes for a moment’s peace in a deserted place by Himself. They track Him down and He responds that we still have work to do so let’s get going. Jesus may have been tired but He was not weary. The crowds who heard Him and looked for Him had their own reasons, but they still heard and they still looked.

What’s the difference? The crowds could easily have quoted Job and with everything going wrong in their lives, they would have had every right to. And even with that, they were motivated by something higher, something greater in order to find an answer or solution. Whether by pure faith or driven by pure desperation, the crowd did not give in to weariness. Yes they were tired of being sick, but they found reason to seek Jesus.

And as for us, we are asked by the readings today, by the examples they show and the human emotions they convey, the same question: are we too weary to seek God? Are we so consumed by the pains and obligations and routine of life that we give in and give up? Has exhaustion clouded our vision and tiredness chipped away at hope?

This is one of those great questions we can often answer by saying, “no, not for me since I’m a believer. Maybe for the garden-variety heathen but certainly not for someone who goes to church.” Perhaps, but having and trying to live our faith is no guarantee against the possibility of losing the vision that God has for each one of us. We would be committing the sin of pride by saying it could never or would never happen to us. No, we don’t see that clearly. The exhaustion and repetition of living this life can wear away at even the best of our hopes and dreams.

And that is why we seek and we discover Jesus. Our faith is no vaccine against reality. On the other hand, it gives us confidence that we can echo the laments of Job in the presence of the God who heals. We can approach the Lord of the universe and tell Him that things are not good, and we don’t know how much longer we can take it, and even ask Him why He can’t change things to be better. We may still be tired, but we are not weary. We can be exhausted emotionally and physically but our soul has found refreshment.

And so we press on. We keep going like an athlete who plays through the pain. Do we want an easier way? Of course; only a fool would not. But we have a vision; we see a purpose that does not start with us nor end with us. We keep going because we can find no reason to stop. Or better, we keep going because we trust that God will never stop loving us.

St. John said, “beloved, we are God’s children now.” We are not the hirelings and slaves whose lives of drudgery have no meaning. We are children of our heavenly Father who has given us a destination and a purpose. The road can be dark and the way can be rocky. But the vision we discover that keeps us going forward is actually the hope that God has in us. And His hope gives us reason to hope. This is so much more than merely taking a chance as if God was playing a slot machine in Las Vegas. This was a decision and a commitment He made in the person of Jesus Christ. And it is this Jesus who, like the crowds of old, we still seek today.

Last week, I was in my scooter going up East Tremont Avenue. It was bitterly cold to the point of my cheeks going numb. And as I was focusing on how cold it was, I heard something coming up from behind me on my right. It was two kids coming from school – one riding the bike, the other standing on the pegs mounted to the rear wheel. I couldn’t help but laugh. I thought these New York kids, we grow up strong don’t we? Even in sub-freezing weather, we could still have fun; we can still go fast.

Yes it is cold, yes the winter can be harsh. Things in life are not always the way we would like them to be. And we can have good right and good reason to complain. And even as we do, our faith points to a hope beyond hope. In our tiredness we start to notice that the daylight lasts a little longer, the nights a little shorter and baseball teams start heading to Florida. Soon enough, those boys riding a bike will not seem so strange. Soon enough, we will run and not grow weary.

Sunday Readings
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Power and Authority

Okay, here’s the situation. An older relative tells you to do something at a family dinner. That relative deserves and demands respect because of their age and position in the family. At another family dinner, another relative tells you to do the exact same thing and you are honored that they asked you to do it. What’s the difference? The difference is at the heart of today’s Gospel. It is the difference between power and authority.

We may honor or fear power but we only truly respect authority. Throughout human history, many have wielded power – some for good and some for bad. In our own lives, we have known teachers, relatives, coaches, and religious types who also wielded power. But only who had authority that we respected changed our lives. You can have power without authority and we called that “tyranny.” Authority – with or without power – is on a different level. It is a force that attracts people to be generous, to be sacrificial, to even risk life itself. Some qualify this definition by calling it “moral authority” to distinguish it from brute force. Not a bad idea because if we all know the difference, it makes a difference in our lives.

People saw the same thing in the synagogue that Sabbath day. From the ordinary parishioner to the demons themselves, Jesus had an authority they had never seen. Sure, he lived and spoke the same rules that the other preachers did. He had a gift that was strong enough to cast out illness and even evil itself. But there was more, and it was something strong enough to move the soul. Power may move our will but only authority can touch the heart. And the human heart is always the battleground where virtue and vice, depravity and excellence face each other.

And in that synagogue today, when Jesus wields his authority in a powerful display of preaching and healing, he has the better of the fight. We know this not merely by the expulsion of the demon but because St. Mark records that, “all were amazed.” He impressed them with his powerful deeds. Anyone would be. But it was clear that he touched their hearts so strongly that they responded with something no power on earth could demand. “They were amazed” is another way of saying that they were caught up in something truly divine yet something so personal.

We are amazed at so much and with good reason. It can be a sunset, a beautiful piece of art, or even the charity shown by someone else. And what a gift it is to experience these things.

Now, if we react so naturally to these wonderful things, doesn’t it make sense that we would also have a supernatural reaction to what God has done in our own lives and the lives of those around us? But often we do not, do we? Maybe we can point out something here or there, but I’m not sure we are totally stunned and awed by God’s handiwork. That’s all right; God knows that to recount every one of his graces would take an eternity. But we begin here. We begin to consider how good God has been to each of us and we find ourselves amazed.

Over the years, this is where I have made a mistake. I used to think that we should all walk around life with a look of happy shock in our faces because God has been so good to us. And I used to think also that if we begin to live out that same goodness, we would be doing so because of the authority of grace even more than the power of God. My mistake was to focus on our reaction to grace. It was inconceivable to me that people – especially the crowd that shows up on Sunday – could not be amazed by this God of ours.

But life is not always that easy is it? It’s nice to count our blessings but it’s hard to do that when things are difficult beyond measure. It is hard to be amazed at anything good when we are stressed by everything going wrong. Our personal demons can shriek loudly and drown out the words of the Gospel. We – of ourselves -- are sometimes not strong enough to let the authority of God’s mercy conquer the power of human weakness.

And that is where I realized I was making the mistake. I was looking at human beings and their ability to choose. The mistake was to ignore the God who amazes us. It is a gift God allows us to have and, yes, we are given the opportunity to respond. But it is about God and not ourselves. I think that is why we are always fascinated by the lives of the Saints because they knew this so well. They were not afraid of the power of God because they were amazed at the authority of grace to change their lives.

As you look back over the years (regardless of how many or how few there have been), can you see those moments when you were amazed by God’s goodness to you? It could be a moment of comfort when things were not going well. It could be a joyful time that you did not expect. It could be at a big moment like a Baptism or a First Communion or it could be a random moment. And thinking of those moments of grace from back then, can you be amazed still? Can we be awestruck by what God is doing in our lives now?

The other day I was at the neurologist and another patient was sitting in the waiting room with us. Somebody struck up a conversation with her about the latest symptoms she was there to treat. Things obviously were not going well. After listing in modest detail her latest struggles, she said to her neighbor, “but the Lord has been so very good to me.”

May God give all of us the grace to say the same thing.