Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 74

Although I am free in regard to all,
I have made myself a slave to all
so as to win over as many as possible. To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some.
All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.

Beyond the TV ads for medicines, we don't hear much about sickness today. Our frailty doesn’t appear in our entertainment media. Nor do we often see sick, disfigured, and dying people in public places. Most are confined to nursing homes, hospitals, and long-term facilities where trained specialists care for them. We say we're concerned about their privacy and so we hide them from the public eye; maybe we just don’t want to think about our innate frailty and inevitable death. They neither entertain nor sell merchandise, and we’d rather not think about that.

Sickness and disability make an enormous demand on those who suffer them, and on everyone around them. We sometimes ask if these people really deserve our help, but their human dignity demands our attention and our assistance, and it's easy to feel overburdened, challenged, and resentful. Their needs remind us that everyone –the whole human race – needs more and wants more than anyone can provide. We may not be willing to think about it, but we need God. In the Church, and especially in today's gospel, we hear about sickness and suffering. Thousands came to the Lord with all the plagues, diseases, and contagions of that pre-scientific era, and he cured them by his word, touch, breath, and even by his spittle. When their religion said uncleanness made people untouchable, this Clean Man from Galilee touched unclean people and made them whole again. Prayer has been our primary treatment for sickness, and often our only treatment. Until recently, we’ve had little else to offer. The Catholic Church offered the "Last Rites'' to those who were dying; but, more often, we appealed to heaven for a cure. The Church has also built shrines all over the world. Every year millions of people go to Lourdes, Fatima, and Guadalupe in search of healing for their physical, mental, and spiritual ailments. The Church offers patron saints who specialize in particular illnesses, like modern medical specialists. Andrew the Apostle cares for people with convulsions, gout, sore throat, fever, and whooping cough. Saint Apollinaris treats epilepsy; Apollonia, toothache; Aspreno, migraine headache; Audoin. deafness; Augustine of Hippo, sore eyes; and Adrian of Nicomedia, plague. And those are just a few of the A's in a Wikipedia article. Saint Blaise, whose feastday falls on February 3rd, heals ailments of the throat.

On any given day, active Catholics ask one another to pray for healing for loved ones and strangers, friends and enemies. And not a few people, homebound and helpless, send millions of dollars to televangelists for miracle cures. Our compassionate Lord, knowing as only a human being can know what it means to be frail, needy, and sick, still cures many who are sick with various diseases; he still drives out demons. And, like today’s gospel, we share these wonderful stories of God’s goodness. We say, “The doctor called it a miracle!” and, “Science couldn’t explain their healing!” But, when sickness,suffering and death are unavoidable, our faith also teaches us how to find meaning and purpose in our misery. We are often tempted to say there is nothing good about this pain. It must stop; it is unbearable; I cannot live with it. But we hear Saint Paul, from his jail cell, declare,

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… to fulfill the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past. As It has now been revealed to his holy ones, for the glory of God.

Paul knew the entire gospel could not be complete in him without his suffering and his patient endurance of it. His teaching would mean nothing if he suffered unwillingly; if he complained, puled, and whined about it; if he didn’t take up his cross and walk in the footsteps of Jesus. He could not know the whole Gospel until he welcomed his setbacks, disappointment, and suffering. But as he cooled his heels in a Roman jail, he discovered the mystery hidden from ages past and now revealed to God’s holy people. No one could have dreamed it up, and few can imagine it even today. In the Lord, nothing is wasted; neither our joy nor our pain are wasted; for in the Lord we live and move and have our being.

This is why we celebrate the Most Blessed Sacrament. When we eat his flesh and drink his blood we declare our willingness to suffer with the Lord as he did – with every human being. We eat and drink hoping that we might comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:18)