Homily: Healing Service

This morning one of our visiting priests, Father Ron Oser, celebrated the morning Mass. Deacon Dick Stevens and I assisted. Twice each year we conduct a healing service following this Mass, so the Mass and service draw many who seek healing in their lives and the lives of others. I was asked to preach the homily at Mass, which I have posted below.
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Readings: Is 6:1-8 • Psalm 93 • Gospel: Mt 10:24-33
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A few years ago, on one of my chaplain days at the hospital, I entered the room of a parishioner.

Normally Diane and I minister together, but on this particular day she was ill and couldn't join me. Of course, her absence means I'll more likely say or do something amazingly stupid.

Anyway, I recognized the man, and we talked for a while about his illness. Then I prayed with him and gave him a blessing. He was lonely and afraid, and not all that comfortable as I prayed. Before leaving, I asked if I could add him to the prayer list of parishioners who are ill.

"Oh, no," he replied, "I don't want people to know I'm sick. I'd like to keep it quiet."

"Oh, okay," I said and left his room. I told you I'd do something stupid.

After visiting a few more patients, I entered a room that was crowded with visitors. I apologized for interrupting and said I'd return later, but the patient, a woman of 85, just said, "Don't go. Come on in and join the crowd." And so I did.

She was a Southern Baptist and her visitors included her husband, a sister, a neighbor, several members of her church, and her pastor. Our conversation covered the waterfront -- her family, her hometown, her illnesses.

In her words, "I've got so many things wrong with me, they don't know which ones to work on. But I really can't complain; God let me live a lot longer than I expected."

I asked if I could pray with her, and the whole crowd joined hands.

I prayed for healing and peace, that God's will be done in her life and the lives of all present. We prayed for her doctors, her nurses, and her husband, and thanked God for the gift of friendship. We thanked God too for the gift of discipleship, for those who listen to the Lord when He says, "I was...ill and you cared for me..." Before leaving, I remarked that she was blessed to have so many caring for her and praying for her.

"Yes," she said, "I am blessed. And their prayers mean so much. They let me know that I am loved, that I belong."

When I left home that morning, I asked Diane to pray that I would minister worthily and well. I guess she did, because as soon as I left that room I headed back to the room of our parishioner. I sat down and said:

"Your Baptism made you a child of God, a member of the Church, of a community of the faithful, a community called to love you. Let that community know you need their prayers, because, believe me, you do. The prayer of the community brings healing; it brings you to repentance and brings peace of mind and soul; it brings you the joy you seek in your life, the joy promised by the God who loves you. In your illness you're lonely and afraid. But God wants you to love and be loved. He wants you joyful, not fearful. Don't let pride separate you from those who strive to be true disciples by doing God's will in the world, which includes loving and praying for you. By praying and caring for you they further God's plan for their salvation and that of the world."

Now, I was just as surprised by my words as he was. They certainly didn't come from me. No, the Holy Spirit and Diane's prayers brought those words into being.

Anyway, after the Spirit's little homily, the patient agreed to be prayed for and as I left I asked him to pray for the Baptist woman down the hall. That generated an odd look so I just said: "Pray for her. Her joy will bring you healing."

It's hard not to think of him as I stand before this community of the faithful gathered here today.

We're gathered in communion, as the Church; gathered here in Jesus' holy name; gathered in Christ's Eucharistic presence; and through that communion we're graced by healing today. This, then, is today's first healing thought:

It's through communion with Jesus, communion with each other, indeed, communion with God's created order that brings healing into our lives.

As Jesus reminds us in today's passage from Matthew: He is "Master of the House." We're not the Master. Our redemption, our healing take place on God's terms, not ours. When we come to terms with God's terms, we may well find ourselves confronting some other corner of our lives where the need for healing is even greater.

We're here today in Jesus' name, and so He is with us. He's also with us in Word and Eucharist. Accept His presence and that of His Spirit, for as Jesus told Nicodemus:

"The Spirit blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes" [Jn 3:8].

Let the Holy Spirit move where He wills in your life. For it is through the Spirit, through Him alone, that you receive the healing God wants for you, that you come to know God's will for you. This leads to our second healing thought:

In our brokenness you and I are called to be both healed and healer.

How many of us, pushing aside our own perceived needs, respond to Jesus' call to be healer? How many of you, here today for healing, are pleading with God to heal those sitting next to you? After all, if we've come together as a communion of faith, gathered here to bring God's healing to His Church, we must respond to His call to be healers.

We all need healing, every one of us. But so often we don't realize the healing God desires for us. Instead we just get irrational: "Why me, Lord, why me?" And then we change our tune: "Heal me, Lord, of this evil thing you gave me."

Isn't that amazing! We blame God, and then ask Him to fix it. And we call ourselves intelligent beings.

We plead for healing...alone

Of course we're just focused on ourselves, and by focusing on ourselves instead of God, we find nothing but fear and loneliness...just like the parishioner in the hospital.

Do we ever think of asking God to turn that which is evil in our lives into something good?

Look around you. Reach out to another in need of healing. Set aside your own needs and minister to the other, to Jesus: "I was...ill and you cared for me" [Mt 25:36].

When we break free of our self-imposed loneliness our fears disappear. Fear's a very natural, human thing. It'd be unnatural not to fear when life is threatened by illness. But listen again to what Jesus says to the disciples:

"...do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul..." [Mt 10:28]

You see, Jesus is telling us that His true disciple need not fear the world and the evils it can bring. And how does He explain this? Simply by letting us know that

"Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known" [Mt 10:26]

In other words, we should never fear because He promised that, ultimately, the Truth will triumph. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And He will triumph. As His disciples, we'll join in that victory.

And so, Jesus, the Lord of History, assures us that He will overcome every threat to the body, every illness, every persecution. You see, brothers and sisters, the true disciple - like the martyrs of the past and present who willingly sacrificed their bodies for the Truth - knows he is more than his body. This brings us to our third and final healing thought:

God always heals the human spirit first.

In our sinfulness we need healing of the soul, for only that can bring us eternal life. Three times in this brief passage Jesus tells the Apostles, and He tells us, not to fear. He implies that we must instead rejoice.

I think again of that woman of 85 in the hospital, how she rejoiced in her illnesses, how she rejoiced in the gift of life, how she rejoiced in God's love expressed through those who prayed for her. She knew that God had healed her many times during her long life, healed her body and her spirit. She knew, too, that whatever healing God gives her this day is the healing He meant for her to have.
Simone Weil, the brilliant, young French philosopher who escaped the Nazis, once wrote:

"Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude."

Yes, two very different people - Simone Weil, born Jewish, Catholic by conviction, died in exile in 1943 at the age of 33; and my Southern Baptist patient in The Villages Hospital - and yet they both came to know this truth about the love of God. Let me repeat: 

"Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude."

We see this displayed so often in the Gospel - the love expressed by those who seek healing from the Lord, a love arising out of their saving faith.

We see it in the faith of the woman who had suffered for 12 years with hemorrhages. [Mk 5]

We see it in the faith of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar of Jericho, who leaps to his feet and goes to the Lord...to see. To see what? To see the Way, to see the Truth, to see the Life [Mk 10].

Bartimaeus Leaps for Joy and is Healed

Jesus tells them and so many others like them, "Your faith has saved you."

Brothers and sisters, will all of us gathered here today accept the way of the disciple?

Will we unite our prayers to bring God's healing power to each other, to the world?

In our brokenness, will we accept the call to be healers, taking Jesus to those in need?

Is there enough wonder in us to accept that God, by healing our spirits, by creating in us new hearts - that by doing this He is doing something even greater than the creation of the universe?

Yes, we have a lot of work to do today. For we are all here not just to be healed, but also to carry God's healing power to others.

Like Isaiah in our first reading, we are called, but can we respond to God's call?

"Here I am. Send me" [Is 6:8]