Saturday, St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Middletown is having a Healing Mass in honor of the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. It was at Lourdes, in France, that Our Lady appeared to a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous. At one point of the apparitions, Our Lady told Bernadette to “drink from the spring.” Bernadette had to dig before she found any water, but today that spring is a site for many pilgrims who seek healing, many have been healed at Lourdes.
Today’s readings also remind us of our Lord’s desire to heal us. In today’s Gospel, Peter’s mother-in-law is healed from a fever, a sign that evil was present. After being healed by Jesus, she gets up and waits on him and the disciples. The gospel is not telling us that she simply felt so good she had to do something for them. The gospel is teaching us that once Jesus saves a person from evil they turn to a life of loving service of God and neighbor.
“Heal the sick” (Mt 10:38) was a command our Lord gave to the Church, and so the Church continues to strive to fulfill this command by caring for the sick and by her prayers of intercession for the sick. But as St. Paul learned, not all illnesses are cured, and the Lord has to remind him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Sometimes our Lord asks us to have faith like Job though he cries out “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery” (Job 7:1). Job still has faith that despite his sufferings, God will make him equal to the task.
Our Lord asks for faith and trusts from us. He asks us to trust him despite the sufferings in our life, he asks us to look beyond our own sufferings and to be willing to unite them to his own, that the greater healing of our hearts and souls may be accomplished. For it is not just for our own sake that he asks us to offer up our sufferings, but for the sake of others, as the catechism reminds us:
“Moved by so much suffering, Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own. ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases’ (Isa 53:4). But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the Cross, Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the ‘sin of the world’ (John 1:29), of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the Cross, Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.” (CCC. 1505)
Peace,
Fr. Mike