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12 Feb 2012 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

The words of the leper who approached Jesus--"if you wish, you can make me clean"--could be those of anyone who approaches the sacraments. While few these days see illness as punishment for sins, as the ancient many times did, just about everyone has the need for the healing touch of Christ somewhere in their lives. The Eucharist invites people to come to Jesus whose sacrifice took on sin and suffering and transformed them into life and joy.

Illness Healing Transformation

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Homily stories

20 Jun 2010 - Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

We still call them funeral parlors because not too long ago when someone died they were often laid out in their own living room, perhaps on the couch where they used to read or crochet or take an afternoon nap. And surrounded with the familiar objects of their life and the family who would be grieving their loss, it was the natural place. Flowers were brought in to mask the all-too-real odors of death as well as to be a tribute. Candles were lit as a sign of faith. Food came from concerned neighbors and was served to all who visited and paid their respects at the wake. In many cases, the deceased had died right in that very house. The entire process allowed the young, especially, to experience the reality of life's cycle and its unavoidability. Illness and death were real and part of life and the home and therefore not something to be afraid of. Today, people more often die in hospitals or hospices than at home. Many elderly live in senior housing and not with their families. Children don't die so frequently. So this cycle has grown very mysterious and frightening to the younger generation. Scripture this weekend deals with these cycles-cycles not only of death and life but also of faith. Those are the realities we cannot hide from but must face not just in some sterile setting, but in the very midst of our daily lives. We do follow Jesus, and that takes us to death but then also to resurrection just as it did for him.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

death funeral Illness

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The nation fails its health exam

05 Jun 2016 - Preaching the News for the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

This Sunday’s readings are about untimely deaths turned around by divine intervention. In the first reading, Elijah intervenes with the Lord to restore a child to life, while in the gospel Jesus is moved by the death of an only son who had been caring for his widowed mother. He calls the young man back to life. Untimely deaths are in the news after a U.S. government report indicated the nation’s death rate unexpectedly rose last year for the first time in years, driven in part by a rising rate of drug overdoses and suicide. Death rates—measured as the number of deaths per 100,000 people—have been declining for years as a result of improvements in health, disease management, and medical technology, researchers said, who added that, while it is premature to ring an alarm now, if the trend continues it could be a signal of serious distress in the health of the nation. “It’s an uptick in mortality and that doesn’t usually happen, so it’s significant,” said Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “But the question is, what does it mean? We really need more data to know. If we start looking at 2016 and we see another rise, we’ll be a lot more concerned.” Experts said the current rise was surprising. “We are not accustomed to seeing death rates increase on a national scale,” said Andrew Fenelon, a researcher at the CDC. “We’ve seen increases in mortality for some groups, but it is quite rare to see it for the whole population.” He added that this setback would drag the United States further behind its European peers: “Many countries in Europe are witnessing declines in mortality, so the gap between the U.S. and other countries is growing.” Others said the finding seemed to fit the broader pattern of rising mortality among working-class whites, a trend that has drawn significant attention recently. Last year, researchers documented rising death rates among middle-age white Americans, particularly those with no more than a high school education. Other research has confirmed rising rates among younger whites. “It does sort of fit together,” with the overall rise in death rates nationwide, said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. When it comes to overdose deaths, it’s misleading to view an illegal drug such as heroin as the only cause, but in 2014 Oxycontin and Vicodin, both of which are legal with a prescription, killed more people than heroin, CDC statistics show. Opioid painkillers are known for affecting the brain and body in many of the same ways as heroin, making them possibly deadly for many users who may come about them legally only to become severely addicted. And a 2015 CDC report revealed that people who abused opioid painkillers were 40 times more likely to abuse heroin as those who had not. The drug challenge in the United States is exacerbated by a healthcare industry that has handed out 259 million prescriptions for opioids since 2012, according to the CDC. Adding to the sad picture, in April, the CDC found that more Americans are choosing to take their own lives than they have in the past three decades. The increase in suicides was figured into the death rate numbers. Suicides have been steadily on the rise since 1999. Lessons drawn from the readings The crowds understand that they have seen signs of divine power and love when they witness the miracles described in Sunday’s readings. Do we understand the signs of our own times? Do we see the suffering around us? Can “each one reach one” and start the healing and care close to home? Who can you help? Final thought in light of the news An increase in death rates was also recorded for Alzheimer's disease, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, chronic lower respiratory diseases, hypertension, Parkinson's disease, septicemia, homicide and firearm-related injury, suggesting that the nation’s health is suffering on many fronts. Healthcare costs consume a huge portion of our nation’s wealth. We should have more to show for it. Let your voice be heard for continued healthcare reform that makes quality, affordable healthcare accessible to all. And while we’re at it, drug treatment programs are woefully underfunded. Let’s take our commitment to the corporal works of mercy to the streets and make sure those who need help can find it.

healthcare Illness death corporal works of mercy suicide drug abuse

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Who's listening?

15 Feb 2009 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

The term leprosy as used in these readings should not be narrowly interpreted to include only those who suffered from Hansen’s disease. In the biblical era, anyone with a visible sore or skin condition might be said to have leprosy. What was true of all of these people was that they were likely to be feared, shunned, and excluded from the full life of the community. Within your community, perhaps it’s best to think today of people who are not present and why: parishioners in nursing homes parishioners in prison unemployed people ashamed to leave the house people whose marriage has failed people who suffer mental illness people who don’t feel they are “good enough” to be in church.

leprosy Community parishioner prision mental illness nursing homes

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Exploring the word

24 Mar 2019 - Third Sunday of Lent, Cycle C

How many names do you have? Think of all the ways people get your attention. A man named John Sims may be Jack to his friends, and in certain formal situations, Mr. Sims. But more important, he may be Daddy to someone and Honey to someone else. Maybe he’s even the boss, the villain, or the hero in someone’s eyes. All of these names tell us who this man is and more about the network of his relationships to others. Unless you’re a celebrity, most of us have more than one name by which we are known. We have many relationships and roles through which we present ourselves to others. Each of these names identifies us, and yet there may be one we use to refer to ourselves, the one that speaks to us of who we are most intimately, the one we only share with the closest people in our lives. In some cultures, people are given two names at birth: one for public use and a private one that is never shared because its power to identify and make claim on a person is too strong. Certainly to give our name to another person is to open a door and admit entrance to someone who is no longer a stranger. Divinity invites us in Our Father who art in heaven. That’s the first name Christians learned for the God we worship. And it’s an especially good one in that it also tells us who we are (God’s children) and where God might be found (heaven). When Jesus taught his disciples to pray to God like this, he gave us entrée to both a relationship and a residence. But before we received this name for God, earlier in our story God shared another name with the people called into special relationship with the divine. Before the time of Moses, divinity was known according to certain activities (creation or destruction), location (God of the mountain), or relationships (God of Abraham). But when Moses encounters the divine, God offers him a privileged name to use, one that seems more personal than any of these others: “I AM.” This name identifies God apart from doing or relating and does not fix God in space. This liberating name seems to describe God “at rest,” as God was on the seventh day, and not in any of the roles God plays or might assume. God exists, it tells us; God has being or is being in an eternal sense. It is the nature of God to be, and God is the source and sustenance of everything that has being. If we want to know who God is apart from how God relates to the world and to us, “I AM” is God’s own self-expression. Learning our true name Because Jesus taught us that God is our Father, it is fair to say that we can also know our true selves apart from the roles we play, the things we do, and the place in which we find ourselves. “At rest” in our interior selves and without accomplishing a blessed thing, we are. And the truth about us can be found in our “being” more than in all the outward activity of our lives. Or as Paul once put it, no matter what we accomplish, if at the heart of ourselves we don’t have love, we have nothing. What we do is clearly not as significant as who we are. This understanding of our humanity gives dignity to people at every stage of life and productivity, to children and the elderly, to those of every ability, to the unborn and the infirm. Everything we are and can be depends on what lies at the core of us when we do nothing at all. This is the truth that every mystic and contemplative knows: When we are still, we know who God is and who we are in the divine image. If we are never still, never silent, never alone, it will be impossible to ever know ourselves, much less the God we serve. Moving outward One of the reasons many of us are reluctant to be known completely is because we fear what might be discovered at the core of our being. There, we are sure, lurk our deepest faults and failures: anger and unforgiveness, greed and jealousy, prejudice and a sense of our own superiority. Seven deadly sins and more fill the swamp at the center of our hearts: Who would want to inspect those waters closely? The Christian understanding of salvation begins with the acceptance of this swamp, however. The starting point of grace is to know that we are sinners and to repent our sinfulness. If not, we become like those around Jesus who pointed at the people of Galilee and Siloam and saw in their violent end some hidden flaw. Jesus insisted that human culpability is spread around pretty evenly. The only thing that separates us is that some of us repent of our sin, and others pretend it away. Repentance leads to conversion, but pretense of virtue only hardens us in our guilt. Applying the word The fruit of the future Jesus tells the story of the fig tree that has produced no fruit in the past. The gardener asks for more time to cultivate the ground and give the tree better conditions for bearing fruit in the future. That future fruit may yet save the whole tree. But without the inward work of cultivation, no outward fruit may be expected. This season of Lent is another chance for us to be still, find out what’s at the core of us, and to take steps to create a new interior environment suitable for producing spiritual fruit. It is safe for us to be so honest. At rest within the heart of the God who is, we have nothing to fear, and everything to gain. Related scripture links The blood is the life: Lev. 17:11 Repentance presumed: Lev. 5:5; 16:21-22; Num. 5:5-7; 1 Sam. 7:6 The ransom for many: Mark 10:45 The freedom of Jesus: John 10:17-18; 13:3

Authors Alice Camille

names I AM be still stillness

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