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29 Jun 2014 - Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, Cycle A

Saints Peter and Paul were both rescued—literally—one from prison and the other from prosecution, at least for a while. They illustrate the deliverance the psalmist testifies to for those believers who call on the Lord, as indeed they did: “I have kept the faith”; “you are the Christ.” But they were saved for something and strengthened for something: to witness to and spread the Good News. We are saved for the same reason: not only for refuge but for mission.

discipleship Saints Salvation Deliverance

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14 Mar 2010 - Fourth Sunday of Lent, Cycle C

The Israelites mark the end of their exodus from Egyptian slavery to the promised land they way they began it: with a Passover meal, the meal of God’s deliverance. Having passed over the Jordan River as they passed through the Red Sea, they stop eating the food of exile and eat instead the food of their homeland and so “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” “For our sake he made him to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him,” writes Saint Paul. Why did Jesus “become sin”? Christ becomes and identifies with what we are—humans capable of sin—so that God’s redemption may draw us to become like Christ. God intervenes to reconcile the world through Christ and therefore gives us in turn the ministry of reconciliation we are to exercise as Christ’s ambassadors. Such reconciliation manifests itself in the “prodigal” love of the father, which overcomes both one son’s leaving the family and another’s resentment. God’s love overwhelms our transgressions. Homily points Being made new is a highly desirable state, especially if we’re honest about the old self. Rituals of newness, including circumcision and baptism, are marks of spiritual maturity. The two brothers in the parable both need to grow up. Their understanding of their father affects their ability to achieve maturity. If we believe in the God of compassion, we can be quite fearless about leaving the old self behind.

Exodus slavery Passover Deliverance prodigal son

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Exploring the word

07 Feb 2021 - Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

What’s the main topic of the Bible? Pose this question, and you’ll get a variety of answers: sin, salvation, love, law, morality, or meaning. Few will suggest that the Bible is mostly about healing and wholeness. Yet some scripture scholars and not a few Christian doctors have made that argument persuasively. Human wholeness, as understood in the Judeo-Christian story, involves the complete package of body, mind, spirit, and relationship. It is fundamentally rooted in our relationship with God. That’s why suffering and death are directly linked to original sin. Once our relationship with God was thrown into jeopardy through sin, our very survival was at risk. In Bible talk, well-being is linked to righteousness, health and strength intrinsically related to obedience. Fidelity to God leads to fertility and longevity, and faithlessness inevitably to barrenness, disease, and death. The word shalom, which occurs some 250 times in the Hebrew Bible and translated in shorthand as “peace,” really means something more like completeness. When shalom is operative, human beings enjoy physical, mental, spiritual, and individual wellness, as well as social prosperity and national peace. As one scholar suggests, the motto of the book of Leviticus—a compendium of laws—boils down to this: “Be holy because I your God am holy.” When we live in God’s image, things go well for us. When we refuse to do so, we open ourselves to a host of maladies and moral deformities. Job, our sufferer-in-chief Job is the first person in scripture to contest the idea that wholeness is strictly the result of holiness. He is the quintessential upright man, yet calamity, loss, and sickness come to him all the same. What did Job do to merit the loss of children, home, property, and wealth; not to mention marital harmony and healthy flesh? What’s more, Job finds his relationship to the greater community in peril, as most avoid him and only a few friends stop by to urge him to repent. The goading point is that Job didn’t do anything to deserve his fate. Even God, who makes a grand cameo appearance at the end of the story, accuses Job of nothing more than petty thinking. The I-Thou relationship between Job and his Maker is obviously quite healthy. So why does Job suffer? The question is open-ended. But the fact that it’s even asked in the Bible consecrates the quest to find the meaning behind our suffering. One clue is in God’s impatience with Job’s provincial perspective. Maybe we should adopt a cosmic viewpoint: If it’s not Job’s sin that causes his suffering, maybe it’s the world’s sin to which he falls victim. Personal holiness cannot save us from the damage caused by communal and intergenerational moral failings. The crucifixion of Jesus is the ultimate argument against the idea that innocence provides us with a buffer against pain. Even those in right relationship with God can and will suffer and die. But there’s more to death than meets the eye The basic Christian platform is that Jesus saves. To believe anything less, to demote Jesus to wisdom figure, hero, or nice guy, is to negate the whole Christian story. The word used for saving power in Greek literally means “safe and sound.” It’s often translated as deliverance. What do Christians insist they are delivered from? Four elements appear in the gospels from which we regularly need to be saved: danger, disease, the condemnation of God, and sin. Paul’s writings, however, narrow the theological scope of salvation to deliverance from sin and its normally unavoidable wage, death. This is the Pauline gospel offered “free of charge” in the same manner Paul receives it. If that’s “all” salvation has to offer, deliverance from sin and death is still nothing to sneeze at. It’s a darn sight better than anything the world has to give. When we find ourselves in Job’s shoes—or his bare feet, more likely—we can trust that though we must certainly die, death has no victory over us. Jesus has redefined biblical health as sharing in the abundant, eternal life of God. This fullness of life bursts at the seams of our present existence so that it cannot be contained in this lifetime. When we accept the invitation to divine life, we find the measure tamped down and spilling over—in a word, unstoppable. “Everyone is looking for you” In The Bible and Healing, John Wilkinson notes: “The heart of the problem is the problem of the human heart.” Everyone looks for Jesus around Capernaum because each has his demon, her fever, their private suffering that needs a healing touch. And Jesus is not averse to exercising his healing powers and including them in the definition of gospel. As he says, “Let us go to the nearby villages that I may preach to them also.” Whereupon he preaches and drives out demons as if the one activity naturally implies the other. Modern Christians tend to downplay the demonic passages because we’re not much for devils these days, but casting out demons was all in a day’s work for Jesus because the experience of being held bound by the power of evil was common. I suspect it’s just as common today—though we use words like addiction, poverty, depression, shame, and low self-esteem to describe our sense of virtual paralysis. Applying the word The fever left her Don’t you want to be healed? I do. I could make a list of things in me that just aren’t right. I’m fettered by past memories and mistakes, and some big doozy poor choices I’ve made along the way. I’ve had my share of “problems of the heart” that impede my ability to love freely. We go to Confession and the sacrament of Anointing to offer up some of these items to the holy healing touch. But if we want the deep healing to take place, we have to grasp the hand of Jesus and allow him to lift us up, as he did Peter’s mother-in-law. To Jesus, it’s all in a day’s work, but to us, it could mean the fullness of life. Related scripture links Be holy as God is holy: Lev. 11:44-45, 19:2, 20:26 Pauline salvation: Rom. 3:10-26, 5:12-21, 6:1-23, 7:13-25, 8:23 Fullness of life: John 5:24-29, 39-40, 6:34-58, 10:9-10, 27-28, 11:25-27 Catechism links Sickness and healing: CCC 164;1499-1510; 1521 Sin: CCC 385-390; 396-412; 601-618; 654; 705; 953; 1865-1869 Salvation: CCC 55; 161

Authors Alice Camille

Job shalom wholeness Deliverance Healing

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