HOMILY WEEKDAY 06 03 – Year II
The Word of God: A Healing Power and a Power to be Lived
(Jm 1:19-27; Ps 15; Mk 8:22-26)
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“Be doers of the Word” and “he saw everything clearly.”
These two sentences capture the essence of the message from today’s readings – we are to live the word of God, to connect faith with life, and come to Jesus for healing.
James not only urges us to move from just reading the Word to living it, but also offers us many ways to do just that: patient listening, letting go of anger through forgiveness, speaking only the truth, and genuine caring for the poor among us. Psalm 15 adds doing what is right, honesty and fairness to the above.
Living the word of God means connecting faith and life. It astounds me how some people who appear to be religious and spiritual, seem to have split off their faith from their actions. A lay person who ran a boys’ choir in a certain residential school was actually a paedophile, and saw nothing wrong with molesting the boys he directed. A scripture scholar who molested young girls, actually refused to apologize and try to make amends, even as he did not deny what he had done in the presence of the victim. Rather than judge these unfortunate individuals, however, we need to make an inner journey into our own lives to see if we have some shadow we need to befriend and heal.
In the gospel, the people have faith in Jesus, who is the Word made flesh. They bring a blind man to him to touch, and heal him. Two details about this miracle stand out: the healing was progressive, and Jesus took him out of the village to perform this miracle.
The slow, progressive healing in stages, I believe, reflects our own journey into befriending our shadow. We cannot heal what we can’t feel, and we can’t heal what we have no knowledge of. It takes time to get in touch with our emotions – to discern them, acknowledge them, validate them, feel them, share them, and finally, come to Jesus to transform our painful emotions into pleasant ones like serenity and freedom.
It also takes time, life events, and often the honest feedback of others to become aware of our own negative attitudes, defects of character and even addictions, before we can befriend them, and come to Jesus to heal them. It has taken time for me to become aware of my impatience, tendency to control, stubborn self-will, and more recently, a sense of entitlement, which then allowed me to come to Jesus for liberation from them.
Cary Landry, in one of his hymns, had it right when he wrote, “We come to you through one another” and “Lay your hands upon us – let them bring your forgiveness and healing.” We all need precisely those two things – forgiveness and healing, to be fully human and free.
Those in the 12 Step program have an advantage. Simply by working Steps 4 – 9 especially, they will be led right into an experience of forgiveness and healing. Steps 4-5 are all about receiving forgiveness from God, ourselves and one other trusted person. Steps 8-9 are all about receiving forgiveness from all the persons we have hurt. And Steps 6-7 are all about healing, leaning how to forgive all those who have hurt us, and how to grieve all the losses in our lives ensuing out of that hurt.
As for being taken out of the village, here is Bishop Robert Barron’s insight:
Blindness is a biblical image for lack of spiritual sight, the inability to see things as they are. One of the effects of the fall was a loss of holiness—seeing with the eyes of Christ, appreciating the world as a participation in the creative energy of God. All of us sinners, to varying degrees, are blind to this metaphysics of creation and tend to see the world from the standpoint of the self-elevating ego.
One of the origins of this spiritual debility is too much time in the bustle of the city. Jesus the healer and judge has to lead us blind people out of the city and give us sight—and then strictly enjoin us not to return to the blinding ways of our society. James puts is this way – care for widows and orphans, and try to keep ourselves unstained by the way of the world.
We unfortunate city dwellers must, through the power of Christ, put on the mind of Christ. And then we must live in a new city, the community of love and justice that is the Church. It is this city of vision that effectively challenges (and judges) the enduring power of our blinding society.
May I highlight some of the ways our society is blind? It no longer sees any value in suffering, so must try to avoid and eliminate suffering, evident with physician assisted suicide, and an epidemic of opioid addictions – all desperate attempts to avoid the pain we no longer know how to handle. Our society also no longer can see the dignity of being created male or female by God, so now we are trying to determine our own gender. And we no longer value truth, so fake news and routine lying seems to be the order of the day.
More than ever, we need to hear, and heed, the words of wisdom coming from these readings – from James, the psalm, and the actions of Jesus. The Eucharist is our own faith encounter with Jesus, who take us aside to listen to his Word, be aware of our failings and need for healing, and receive that healing through communion with his body and blood.
May our celebration strengthen our faith in him, attend to his word, be more aware of our need for both forgiveness and healing, and empower us to connect our faith with our lives.
