The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Healing

Is. 35:4-7; James 2:1-5; Mk.7:31-37

".... contemplating the mystery of God's cross will change the way we come to terms with our own pain. If we have explored the mystery beforehand we may, when sickness, death, betrayal or disappointment befall us, be better prepared to see that God is not fare from us, but keeps us company and continues to hold us up with those hands that from the beginning of time have been pierced with unimaginable nails."

These words from Martin l. Smith's book, Nativities and Passions, illustrate so eloquently the compassion of God enfleshed in Jesus Christ. Jesus comes to a man who, according to the views of the times, should not and did not expect anything from God or human beings. It was thought at that time that people born with physical disabilities or diseases were accursed and forsaken by God. It was thought that one paid for one's sins, or the sins of parents, in the body. So such a person could only feel forsaken by God and human beings--they were not seen, they were non-persons ! But Jesus comes to this man, touches him where the pain is, where his oppression is, and open himself to the fullness and the depth of the man's pain in order to heal it!

We are told that Jesus let out a "groan". In the Scriptures we know that God's Spirit groans in labor to bring new possibilities into being. It is a groaning that knows and shares the pain of human beings and all creation ! It is the experience of pain borne of the fullness of God's compassion. It is compassion that breaks through and enters the pain of God's creatures and the creation. We know from experience that his is an important step to healing.

On a personal level the physical, emotional and spiritual pain we fell in life begins to give way when another chooses to sit in our pain with us, and helps to alleviate it . The healing professions themselves are most effective when their skills and their human touch are brought to bear on the suffering of their patients.

James' letter raises this issue in a slightly different manner. He points to the pain of the poor--those whom, even in the Christian community, were discriminated against because there were not considered equals, and for some, non-person--it direct opposition to the Gospel! James rebukes this behavior, and the attitude behind it, because a relationship with Jesus Christ calls the Christian community to listen to the poor, sit in their pain, and to work to heal it in the power of the Spirit of the compassion of Jesus. That is, the Christian community is called to groan with the poor and the Spirit--to suffer in labor in helping to give birth to a new life, a new opportunity, a new humanity that is free from the things that hold people down. It is a call to have our eyes and ears open so that we can see and hear the pain of others and our world and work with God to heal it.

In his encyclical, Cent. Annus 1991, Pope John Paul II put it this way: "....the social message of the Gospel must not be considered a theory, but above all else a basis and a motivation for action.... Today more than ever, the Church is aware that her social message will gain credibility more immediately from the witness of actions than as a result of its internal logic. This awareness is also a source of her "preferential option for the poor," which is never exclusive or discriminatory toward other groups."

We also know that families experience pain. Maybe fathers and mothers, and husbands and wives experience the pain that comes in long term relationships and the trials of lif. In times of conflict the hurt that can occur can drive them away from each other. Of Course, the children in the family may be hurting because they long for parental approval for being who they are, not what they have or have not accomplished. The resolution and healing of so much hurt begins when we enter the pain of our wives, husbands, parents and children. In the spirit of the compassion of Jesus Christ, new opportunities are revealed to us for seeing each other and listening to each other as loving and lovable persons!

The experience of another's pain, the pain of the poor, and the pain of creation, in the Spirit of Jesus compels us to be co-healers with Christ. Working together, inspired and lead by God's grace, the blind begin to see, the lame to walk, streams appear in deserts and belief that God sits with us in all things. And as God's people, we are called to bring God's healing power to all by voluntarily choosing to dwell in the suffering of others, oneself, with the poor and creation--not because suffering is good, but rather, because we are God's agents to help alleviate it!

One writer put it this way: " Only the suffering god can help", wrote D. Bonhoeffer in his Gestapo cell. And it is true that a God who cannot suffer, and suffer with us, could not understand us. That is why Christians then "stand by God in his suffering."

Once we enter the realm of God's compassion in Jesus we commit ourselves to the alleviation of suffering by freely choosing to enter it with others in order to reduce its power , and to bring God's healing. This is the Christian motivation for helping to heal broken hearts, broken bodies, broken classes and broken societies. In the end we are not about "causes, we are about Christ's compassion!

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded January 14, 2000