Gospel
Mark 1:40-45
Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. ‘Of course I want to!’ he said. ‘Be cured!’
The words of my friend pierce my thoughts as I read this weeks Gospel. “I’m struggling to see how God is loving my daughter in this” she stated, resigned but not angry, perhaps weary from fighting for her child, fighting the sickness and fighting with God. Honestly, I felt angry for her. We have prayed hard, everyday, for more than a year, fasted, masses, no prayer method left untested and we are still praying but the miracle healing hasn’t come.
So why this leper ? Why do some get the healing and so, so many don’t? We cling to the miracle stories of evaporating Cancer cells, tumours disappearing overnight and then watch the suffering of those who Jesus seems to have overlooked. What about those who have not been chosen for giving God the Glory of a personal miracle testimony?
I took this to Prayer, it’s too easy to slip into the noose of thinking you must reach the magic number of rosaries prayed then, only then you get the miracle, like God has some spiritual spreadsheet and watches as we fill the cells till it’s complete. But this isn’t truth.
I over heard on a zoom call a young woman who’s grandparents had said she got Cancer because she was gay. This isn’t my God or His truth. This is a twisted answer to suffering.
Perhaps we lack faith ? Another favourite, did St Bernadette who struggled with ill health her whole life lack faith? Did Terese of Liseux lack faith as she slowly died of TB? We use these trite and easy answers which even though well intentioned, only placate those delivering them and never the person who is suffering.
I don’t have a whole answer, it wouldn’t make you shrug off suffering. But I have an understanding. God isn’t offended by my wrestling.
God isn’t a Band aid kind of healer. Pain is a sure indicator that something is wrong. On going research is showing that around 70% of sickness in adults is the result of unresolved emotional trauma. The rest being genetic or environmental. What if the symptoms are healed but the real issue is never touched, remaining like a toxic cell eating away from the core. I have to wonder if God often doesn’t heal the symptoms of diseases so we can look to heal the real source of the pain. We can and often do anaesthetise emotional pain.
But this isn’t the whole of it. There are as many possible individual answers as individual sicknesses.
God told me to look at this as a bigger picture.
It’s a fallen world isn’t it? We know this isn’t the original plan. The result of the brokenness is suffering, and whilst God forgives us all our repented sin, the consequences of that brokenness have to remain. To remove the consequences of a sinful world would ensure that not one of us would ever reach heaven. As a whole human race we suffer the consequences don’t we? Our connectivity means we each contribute to the separation in some way, we all bring something to the collective “fallen” pot. Can you imagine where we would be if every consequence was removed. It is in fact an act of mercy for us to suffer the consequences of sin, even if it isn’t our own. From this place of comfort I can see this clearly and be grateful for it. It would, I’m sure feel unjust in the trial.
So what about the few who do receive the miracles? Perhaps the interior healing has already taken place, perhaps there is a readiness and openness to change, perhaps the doctor heard Gods voice this time, maybe the surgeon prayed before that operation or perhaps they received the ultimate healing of passing into an eternity where suffering is only a vague memory. Perhaps we miss many miracle healings and assume they were the work of our own hands. I don’t pretend to have this all worked out. But I do know that Jesus weeps with us. That Jesus lays beside us when we can’t stand, he doesn’t try to say it’s all ok, he comes right into where it isn’t. He is more present in these times, while the story of salvation is still working itself out than in the times of comfortable sanitised praise and prayer.
So let’s keep praying, it changes us, it changes the world and takes us another step closer to that time where every tear will be wiped away. Hang in there my friend, He’s close, and He sees you. You are not forgotten.
Interesting thoughts and points to ponder. Thanks for sharing. God bless you!