Journey of Healing 1st if 6

Please share. This is our bible reflection series for lent being offered at St. Christopher.

Points to Ponder/Discuss:

Is there a pattern in these healings?

Can I relate to the characters in these events?

Do I accept my brokenness, ignore it, try to improve it?

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Today, since it is the first reflection, we take a sweeping look at maladies of the Synoptic Gospels.  In no particular order, we find: lepers, fevers, blindness, hemorrhages, paralytics, deaf, mute, crippled, and even the dead.  Above all we find the sinner.  It is to these people that Christ has come. In the text quoted in our title, Luke 5:31, Jesus says: “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  Here he is connecting our physical weaknesses to our moral corruption.  It is not to say that one is the cause of the other, but rather to point out that the REAL BROKENESS IS SIN.  All other healings are a means, a way of expressing and accomplishing our salvation.  To use a well-known Pauline metaphor: healing’s purpose is to replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. 

With this in mind we can recognize that the maladies in the Gospels are two fold: a true physical weakness and a sign for us of our moral corruption.  Have we been deaf to the words of Christ? Or closed our eyes to His presence?  Have we allowed an old injury or chastisement to drain our energy, our “life blood,” from our daily living? Have we sealed our lips against a difficult crowd, when we should have been open to proclaim the Word? Have we gone slowly through moments of life, when in fact we should have run? Have we waited, and waited, not moving at all, sedentary in our misery?  Have we allowed grace to completely drain from our souls, living as it were in mortal corruption, dead to the graces of the Church?

Indeed, the first step to being healed is to know that you are broken. But, on this note, please be attentive. Broken means “NOT AS INTENDED.” We are intended for perfection (as the Father is perfect), wholeness, and holiness.  We are good and beautiful, magnificent creations with a supernatural purpose. But like a priceless painting that was vandalized, we need to be RESTORED and CORRECTED before we can properly glorify the Divine Painter.

The people in the Gospel knew this reality. They are presented with both relatively small deformities, and others already lifeless.  They did not deny that they had a problem. Perhaps there were thousands more that Jesus’ could have healed, but they refused to recognize that they were in need of healing. Wasn’t this the problem of the Pharisees? Saducees? Herod? Pontius Pilate? And who knows how many others….

Let us acknowledge and come to grips with the reality that in every moment the Sacred Scripture is talking to us, as a community, and as an individual.  Every healing has a message for us, and that message begins with the need to recognize our broken spirits. This is not an attempt to deny the truth that Christ heals the body, but rather an attempt to strengthen the conviction that

He ALWAYS heals the soul!