The Healing We Need
Homily for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
This healing to be found in Christ is a definitive healing, and because it is a definitive healing it is not limited to this world.
Were you paying attention to the first reading? It’s a bit of a downer, isn’t it? In case you might not have been listening, here it is again:
Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?
Are not his days those of hirelings?
He is a slave who longs for the shade,
a hireling who waits for his wages.
So I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.
If in bed I say, “When shall I arise?”
then the night drags on;
I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again (Job 7:1–4, 6–7).
Life is a drudgery? Days without hope? “I shall not see happiness again?” What on earth, we might wonder, is this text doing in the Bible? The Bible, as we are told, is the word of God. The Church encourages us to look to it for inspiration. We open its pages when we feel hopeless, hoping to find hope! We turn to the scripture when we are unhappy for some sense of assurance and comfort. We don’t expect to find such lamentations as we do in the Book of Job.
So why is this text in the Bible? We find this text in the Bible because the Bible is not a self-help book. The Bible is not a feel-good best seller. The Bible is the inspired word of God and we find this text in the Bible because it is true.
It is true. Sometimes we feel like life is a drudgery. It is true. Sometimes we feel like God has assigned us months of misery. Sometimes we experience sleepless nights that drag on and days that pass too quickly. Sometimes we feel like our life is without meaning, without purpose, and yes, without hope. Sometimes we feel that way. Sometimes we feel so unhappy that we can’t imagine ever being happy again. Those are true feelings that people experience. Maybe some of you feel that way right now. Job felt that way. And Job had every right to feel that way. The sorrow expressed by these words is a genuine and authentic human experience and that’s why we find it in the Bible. The Bible is God’s word for us and that word is real and it is true. God is telling us that he knows the depths of human suffering. He understands our pain.
The Book of Job is the Old Testament’s answer to one of the most difficult religious questions mankind can ask. That is: why do good people suffer? Job is a good man. And he is a blessed man. He has a family, a livelihood, a home, a good reputation. He has wealth and fortune. And more important than any of that, he loves God and is loved by God. He is a good and God-fearing man. And one day it all comes crashing down. He loses it all, faster than seems possible, and is considered cursed by all who know him.
Why? Why must such a good man experience such sorrow? The answer that comes at the end of the Book of Job may not satisfy us, but it is true and perhaps the only honest answer we can expect. God answers the prayers of Job’s anguish by essentially saying, “I am God and you are not.”
God poignantly reminds Job that He, and not Job, is the creator of the heavens and earth. He, and not Job, is all-knowing and all-powerful. He needs no counsel from Job. He does not need to explain Himself. He owes Job nothing. Nothing. So Job repents. And yes, at the end of the text, he is blessed and finds fortune again. He is rewarded for his faithfulness and that’s a good reminder to anyone who’s suffering that things can get better. But that doesn’t erase the fact of Job’s suffering. And it doesn’t make our suffering any easier. It doesn’t answer our question: How long, O Lord, how long must I endure this?
Yet Job, as I said, is the Old Testament’s best answer to the problem of suffering. It is the Old Testament’s best answer. But it is not God’s final answer. What is God’s final answer?
We meet God’s final answer today in the fishing village of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. A fisherman lives there, named Simon, with his mother-in-law, who is ill. Simon has been spending less time fishing in recent days and more time following around an itinerant rabbi from Nazareth. He is not like other rabbis. He’s not a scribe or a Pharisee. He has no formal training. He is a carpenter’s son. Yet he speaks as one with authority. He is captivating in unexplainable ways. He has called Simon away from his nets to be his disciple and today he comes into Simon’s house. He sees his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He comes to her, and he heals her.
He does this sort of thing a lot, as it turns out, healing those who are ill. He restores sight to the blind. He opens the ears of the deaf. He cleanses lepers and causes the lame to walk. One day, in the not-too-distant future, Simon will even see him raise people from the dead.
And he is not only concerned with people’s physical well-being. This man drives out demons. He cures the possessed of their spiritual afflictions. And he teaches the truth with both gentleness and patience, but also conviction and strength. God’s final answer to the problem of all human pain and suffering is the Person of Jesus Christ, His Son, who offers healing for our bodies, our spirits and our minds — in other words, our whole being as persons. For this purpose he has come.
This healing to be found in Christ is a definitive healing, and because it is a definitive healing it is not limited to this world. In fact, we may never experience it at all in this world, at least not in the way Peter’s mother-in-law did, or the demoniacs he exorcized. Most Christians throughout history have never been miraculously healed or cured of demonic possession. And yet every Christian has been healed and restored by Christ. Every Christian has been born again a new creation by baptism, joined in a mystical way to Christ’s Body, that human body united by grace with the divine so that union with the Body of Christ means union with God.
We begin to experience that union now but we will know it fully not in this life of imperfection, but in the life to come that is promised to all those who die in Christ. And that is God’s answer to the problem of suffering — not to remove our suffering, because that would be a falsehood. Suffering is real. Pain is real. In fact, it is formative. It helps us to become more compassionate and understanding people. What I mean by that is that any pain we go through helps us to relate better to others who go through pain, and therefore love them better, because we understand their condition. This is how God loves us, after all, by sharing our condition. So God’s answer is not to take suffering away, but to transform it; to transform it by entering into it himself, experiencing it with us, taking it literally on his shoulders as He carries the cross and telling us that if only we suffer with Him, our suffering can be redemptive; it can, in fact, be our passage into eternal life.
One day all our suffering will end. The greatest pain in this life is still temporary. It is a thing of time. And what Christ offers us is not anything as small and fleeting as happiness limited by time, but everlasting happiness with him in the life to come; if we but live with him. If we but die with Him.
That dying with Christ begins with our baptism but it lasts throughout our life, each and every time we say to God, Thy will be done; each and every time we accept the trials and difficulties of our human condition as our share of Christ’s passion, and endure it with patience and charity. The Christian is not one who never suffers, but one who suffers well because he suffers with hope and with faith in the One who came to heal all our infirmities and wipe every tear from our eye. Glory be to Jesus Christ now and forever. Amen.
