Homily: Mass and Healing Service - Saturday, 31st Week of Ordinary Time

Readings: Rom 16:3-9, 16, 22-27; PS 145; Lk 16:9-15
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Good morning, everyone...and praise God - praise Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's wonderful to see so many here today; all open to God's healing presence. Praise God too for this.

We're gathered here in Jesus' name, so we know He's with us. And where Jesus is, so too is the Father, for they are One, One with the Holy Spirit. We want the Holy Spirit among us in all His power, in all His glory, so we can come to know our loving Father better, all through Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Among the many things Jesus told us about the Spirit is that He does the work of the Trinity.  That's right...the Spirit does all the heavy lifting.

When we turn to Scripture we find the Holy Spirit inspiring, revealing, anointing, and counseling. He does it all. He's the giver of life, the fount of Truth and Wisdom, the sanctifier, the source of sacramental grace, the manifestation of God's power in the world. When Jesus rejoiced, He rejoiced in the Spirit. When He prayed, He prayed filled with the Spirit. The Spirit teaches us, intercedes for us, guides us, and, as promised, will be with us always. Yes, the Holy Spirit, God's gift to us, does God's work in the world. And thank God for that because we certainly need Him in our world today.

Do you know something else? He's also the Divine Healer, for healing is the Spirit's greatest work. God knows how much we all need healing - healing of body, mind and spirit - and He sends His Spirit into the world to heal all who come to Him.

What kind of healing do you need? What do I need? We're so sure we know, aren't we?

We always seem to turn to the obvious -- our bodies. They just don't hold up do they? Illness, injury, and age all take their toll. And so we turn to the Lord in our suffering and in  our fear, in our aches and pains, our illnesses, in the trials of our children, in the sometimes shattered lives of those we love...and we pray for healing. We don't understand why this suffering has fallen upon us, or why God doesn't just take it away. But St. Paul tells us:

"We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings" [Rom 8:26].

Now that's amazing, isn't it? Because you and I don't know how to pray, the Holy Spirit prays for us, intercedes for us, within the Trinity itself. And He does so in ways we can never understand.

Today I'm going to focus on one verse, actually just four words:

"God knows your hearts..." [Lk 16:15]

About 20 years ago, I was teaching a class of ninth-graders who were preparing for Confirmation. During one of our sessions, while discussing God's divine nature, I went through the list of those attributes we normally assign to God...you know...He is eternal, holy, immutable, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, immaterial...

Anyway, as I was reciting these attributes, one young man interrupted and asked, "What does omniscient mean?"

"It means God knows everything," I replied.

"Okay," he said, "you really don't mean everything, like what's going to happen tomorrow."

"Oh, yes, He knows everything that happens, throughout all time - past, present and future - and everywhere, in the universe and in eternity, every single thing, no matter how large or small."

But that didn't satisfy this budding theologian. "Okay, but you mean He just knows things. He can't know thoughts too, can He?"

"Oh, yes, thoughts are God's specialty," I said. "He knows your every thought, your every desire, all your hopes and dreams...and He knows them all even before you have them, the good, the bad, and yes, even the ugly."

Well, in the silence that followed...I wish you could have seen that young man's face. "You're really serious, aren't you?" he finally asked.

"Yes, I am. You can't hide from God. He knows you perfectly, far better than you'll ever know yourself. You see, God knows your heart."

God knows your heart...

Yes, brothers and sisters, God knows your hearts.

The psalms praise "God who knows the secrets of the heart" [Ps 44:22]

And Peter, at the Council of Jerusalem, speaking of the Gentiles, tells his brother apostles:

"God, who knows the heart, bore witness by granting them the Holy Spirit just as He did us" [Acts 15:8]

But it's in today's Gospel passage from Luke that we hear these words spoken by Jesus Himself to the Pharisees:

"God knows your hearts"  [Lk 16:15]

Do you think maybe those Pharisees recalled the words of Psalm 139? 

Lord, you have probed me, you know me: you know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar...Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? [Ps 139:1-2,7]

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Yes, "Where can I go from your Spirit?" We can't hide from God.

From our human perspective, His omniscience seems to be a double-edged sword, doesn't it?

We rejoice that God, in humbling Himself to become one of us, also honors us through this same act of love. We rejoice that we are worth so very much to our loving God that even the hairs on our head are numbered. He knows every microbe, every atom of our bodies. He knows our every fear, our worries, our joys, our pains, our sorrows. But He also knows every sin, every dark secret, every hatred, every weakness.

Yes, our awareness of God's omniscience might, as St. Paul says, fill us "with fear and trembling" [Phil 2:12].

Sometimes we respond like Jonah, and try to hide from God; or we turn up the world's volume and try to drown out God's voice. But it doesn't work...because God knows my heart. He knows my entire being.

Too often we simply forget this remarkable truth about God. We think we have to teach Him things.

I remember visiting a woman in a nursing home, giving her the Eucharist, and afterwards chatting with her for a while. I'd visited her several times before, but had never really had the opportunity to talk with her. Anyway, that day she was very upset with God. She'd been seriously ill for a long time, and wasn't getting any better.

"I pray every day," she said, "hoping that God will help me get better. If God only knew how much I suffer..." It took every ounce of control not to burst out laughing. That, of course, would not have been very pastoral.

Instead I assured her that our all-knowing, all-loving God certainly knew how she suffered, and that He too had suffered.

I always carried a few cards with me. They had a picture of Christ crucified on one side and the words to that wonderful old "Prayer Before a Crucifix" on the other. I gave her one and we prayed together. We prayed for healing, that the Holy Spirit would take her heart, the heart that God knows so well, and fill it with His healing peace.

As I left that day, for the first time I saw her smile. She died a week later.

But, you see, brothers and sisters, we're all a little bit like her, aren't we? We all like to complain about our sufferings. As my wife, Diane, will be happy to tell you, I'm not a very good sufferer.

I remember back in my Navy days, a fellow officer, knowing that I was a Catholic, mentioned that he could never be a Catholic: "You people seem to enjoy suffering so much. That can't be healthy."

Well, he wasn't talking about me. And, anyway, he was wrong. Catholics don't enjoy suffering. To enjoy suffering is to be mentally ill. No, we Christians accept suffering, and that's something quite different. We all experience suffering; it's truly democratic.

Victor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist who survived his years in the Auschwitz death camp, wrote a wonderful book, Mans Search for Meaning. He wrote of our freedom to choose how we respond to suffering. We can choose to be embittered, broken, hateful, resentful, or we can accept our sufferings as a path to something greater.

Gate to Auschwitz Death Camp

As always, Jesus shows us the way. He took His sufferings and turned them into something far greater, into an act of redemption. All of Scripture points to that act, to the Cross, for it's nothing less than the story of God's love, of His willingness to suffer for you, for me, for all of humanity. And we're called to join our sufferings to His. We're called to be like Paul who could say:

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church..." [Col 1:24]

You see, dear friends, what's lacking in Christ's suffering is our acceptance of our own suffering, willingly taken up with Jesus on His walk up Calvary.

As Christians suffering has meaning and worth because through it we share in Christ's sacrifice. When you and I come to understand, if only in the smallest way, His sorrow and His undeserved suffering, ours begins to pale and lighten as we place ourselves at His Side. And through that experience we learn how well God knows our heart. Through that experience we realize how faltering, how inadequate our prayer is; and how much we need the Spirit to intercede for us with those inexpressible groanings of His.

There will be healings here today, sisters and brothers. Some of you have come for physical and emotional healing. And there will be some of those. But every one of us here today needs spiritual healing, healing of the soul, the healing that comes from total surrender to God.

God knows your heart, but what's in your heart today? Are you willing to make an act of surrender, an act of abandonment, and take all that you have, all that you are, and lay it at Jesus' feet.

He wants it all, you know...out of a love so great it's beyond our understanding.

He wants us to mirror His redemptive act of love by sharing in the crosses that we each must bear.

And did you come here today only to pray for your own healing? What of those sitting to your left and right, or behind or in front of you? Will you join with all of us as we pray for each other?

Do we recognize the power of the collective faith and prayers of our community?

Do we trust that Jesus can do the same for us as faithful, prayerful people who lift others up who need to be healed?

After Mass we'll have a laying on of hands. Come forward. Turn your heart and mind to Jesus Christ. Give Him permission to come into your life, to work His will within you.

"Heal me, Lord, and heal those around me." Let that be your prayer. "Heal me, Lord, of all that's keeping me from being one with you."

Trust God, brothers and sisters. He knows your heart.

Praised be Jesus Christ...now and forever.