Looking over today’s readings, obviously, one of the main themes we can consider is thanksgiving. However, looking more closely, I realized that maybe we need to address healing itself.

In both the first reading and the Gospel we see men healed from the biblical concept of leprosy. That disease was not what we would call today Hansen’s disease. It was, however, one of a group of skin diseases that was also equated with disobedience to God and sin. Contagious, victims had to quarantine themselves from the community. Imagine, not Hansen’s disease but a disease that is as much connected to behavior outside of the holy person as any number of diseases related to sinful behavior.

What was most most important was that being healed of the disease is also a lesson in forgiveness and being brought back into the fold. In the case of the ten lepers, anyone who had any contact with them, including going into their house, would be considered as unclean as they were, until they engaged in purity rituals. Therefore, if Mary Jones was sick, and was considered a leper and you entered Mary Jones’ house, to care for her, you would be treated similarly until you were made ritual pure. In a modern medical understanding you would have to be decontaminated before returning to the community. However, the decontamination was a religious ritual not a medical procedure. There is no evidence in the New Testament that this practice continued in the Christian community.

Let us look at our own reality. There is an old saying that a church is a hospital for sinners. Let us turn that saying around a bit. A church community is a place of healing. This is a concept that maybe we have lost over time. I know coming from the community I do, that the concept of the Catholic mass and the parish itself to be a place of healing is a foreign one to what I know growing up. We never thought of Church in this way, indeed, a concept we considered was church as gas station to give us more energy to continue our journey to Heaven. However, if we look at the mass, we see that healing is a central fruit. We declare ourselves sinners at the beginning of mass and we receive the Eucharist to bring us closer to Christ as the central part of mass. Healing is what we do. We receive healing over time from that which is leading us to death and we receive grace from what is leading us to life.

What is key in light of the gospel is that like the skin diseases we see in the bible described as leprosy, we cannot heal ourselves on our own, but, Christ’s presence in the community itself becomes a source of healing. Maybe we can that say one of our problems with people not coming to mass at all is that they do not understand the correlation between healing and mass. If they do, they do not see a need to be healed and do not see a reason to come to mass for that reason. Can we see how our community may have had a healing affects on us and it is supposed to be like that.

I am certainly not the same person I was when I first returned to the Church in 1980, but then again, I should not be. What is more important is the question: Has the Church had a healing affect on me since that day? Absolutely, and our church community is to have that same affect on everyone. God’s grace works in the community as a healing grace that leads us to be more human and alive. Many will say they can worship God in the woods, but our coming together to worship God must have a healing affect on us. That is why God calls us together as a community for He bestows his powerful graces on us and brings us closer to Him not only through the sacrament, but also through the community.

This is why there is great punishment in the bible for those who interrupt the healing affects of the community by ignoring God’s grace, and still coming into the community. In other words, the unrepentant sinner who goes through the motions but has no intention to change is the one who God castigates. That is because he is rejecting the healing power of grace and calls others to do the same. It would be like going to the doctor but refusing to take your medicine. Doctors get upset with patients who do that, you can be severely punished for telling others to follow your example. Say for example you tell the diabetic not to take his insulin. Likewise, God punishes severely those who reject His healing grace and calls others to do the same.
For everyone else, that healing power is there and it transforms us over time into what we could not be outside the community.

Our Catholic community must be one that channels the healing graces of the Father, through the Son and the Holy Spirit. It cannot survive if it is a community that does not bring forth the healing power of God. Again, I am not referring necessarily to healing where everyone who comes in with crutches walks out on their own power. That is not impossible and can happen, but I know of no case like that. But God’s healing is one that transforms us from the inside out. It is a healing power that heals us spiritually and emotionally from the very real affects of sin, and then at times physically. So the community itself that is rooted in Christ becomes a source of healing and love and we must pray that we are becoming that kind of a community, doing God’s will and being thankful for how we have been healed.

Let us ask the Lord to transform our hearts, communally, as He transformed not only the ten lepers, but also Namaan the Syrian, men who had no ability to see their healing take place outside of divine intervention, but men who saw their healing happen. It is true that only the Samaritan and the Syrian were thankful, in these readings. We must never be like them, but we must be open to all that the Lord is doing in all our lives through the community that comes before Him every Sunday to receive His grace and healing power in our lives.
God bless you,
Fr. Robert J Carr

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