I recently overheard a conversation where a mother was sharing with her friends the miraculous healing of her daughter who had incurred a serious leg injury. A woman in the group expressed that she really had a hard time believing in such healings. She shared that she had prayed fervently for a friend with cancer…and no healing came. Her friend died, leaving behind a grieving husband and 8 children. Her faith was shaken and she wondered why would God heal the girl of her leg injury but not the mother with cancer.
It’s a legitimate human question; why does God heal some and not others? Why does God seem to hear the prayers of some and ignore others? Why did God heal the girl and not the mother? Why hasn’t God healed my daughter; why didn’t he preserve the lives of my father and brother? Yet others, that may I judge as not as deserving, have been healed – often miraculously!?
The responsorial Psalm for today is, “The judgements of the Lord are true, and all of them just.” That’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes.
Today’s Gospel gave me a chance to reflect on my frustration with the “judgements of the Lord.” One passage stood out to me as a key in resetting my view of the Lord, His judgements, and justice.
Jesus says to the paralytic, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”
Maybe the paralytic, like me, thought, “well that’s nice but what about my legs!”
Jesus goes on to heal the man; spirit and body, “Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
In this passage, like a good Doctor, Jesus heals the most serious wound first! (read that again)
Elsewhere we are told, “It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna.” (Matt 5:29)
In other words, in the end, the body doesn’t matter; it is subordinate in importance to the soul. Even Jesus’ greatest bodily healings recorded in Scripture amount to little compared to the healings of the soul.
The man cured of his blindness…eventually died.
The hemorrhaging woman… eventually died.
The healed lepers, deaf, and mute …also died.
The little girl and Lazarus whom Jesus brought back to life…died again.
Bodily healings during the time of Jesus and even to this day are but temporary fixes, bandaids for the temporal body. We should not look upon them as signs of God’s overflowing love for one and not another. They are signs of His overflowing love but they are also opportunities for the individual and us to grow closer to God. They are reminders that this body is not going to last forever, but our souls will.
While God commands us to care for our bodies, they earthly are Temples of the Holy Spirit, we must remember that there is something even more important than physical health. This is why Jesus, in the Gospel of John, says this to the man he healed by the Pool of Bethesda, “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.” Worse than lying on a mat trying to get to the pool for 38 years!? Yes, emphatically, yes! Far worse!!
The judgements of the Lord are true, and all of them just.
Lord, I want healing for myself and others…only if it is Your will! I want miracles for my friends and family…only if it is Your will! If these things are not Your will, help me to understand, no matter how difficult at the time, that your judgements are true and just.
James M. Hahn, Author 