healing
Masses with healing are always well attended. This is an irony because we are supposedly in an age where so many medical breakthroughs have been made. We have medicines unheard of before, we have treatments that were then considered suicidal but now mere routine. Doctors are becoming more and more specialized they practically know every nook and corner of your heart, kidney and eyes, so practically they know how to diagnosed and treat every problem encountered by their specialization. And yet why do people flock for healing? Why do people gather by the thousands and walk in pouring rain for masses for healing? I do not have answers. But I will just make a conjecture – conjecture in hiligaynon it means palagpat.
We may have provided medicines a lot more sophisticated than we have before, but do we administer that one important need of any ailing person - care. We may have given the sick a lot of x-rays, MRI’s, CAT scans, even prying eyes inside ones stomach but do we also provide the most basic of human need in times of crisis – accompaniment? We may have taken the sick to the best doctor, the most experienced, the most skilled, the most knowledgeable doctor, but have we provided the sick with the most important need of one who is loosing hope fast – assurance, not simply assurance of expertise but assurance in terms of love, of faithfulness, assurance of unconditional love? The world has provided us with an unprecedented control over our destiny that we may have grown self-assured in our belief that we can alter space and time, that we can control the environment we live in and our lives, that we can manipulate genes and effectively wipe out diseases, that we can create things that will alter our way of life – we may have grown so self-assured, the thought of sickness and death comes as a real surprise to us now as it was to the generation before us. In this shocking realization and revelation which sickness brings have we opened the mind of those who are sick among us the need to re-learn to accept things, to embrace the inevitable in loving surrender. Is there a need for us, in situations that call for it, to abandon our self-assured, control freak stance and learn once more self-surrender? Is this irony created by the thought that we are gods, that we live in a fairy tale that always ends happily ever after. Have we lost our humanity in the sense of accepting transitory-ness and impermanency of life and therefore health?
I do not know. I am just shooting at the air hoping I can hit on something worth reflecting on. But this I know for sure, there is something lacking, terribly lacking in the way we view sickness and health, pleasure and suffering, life and death.
Is this the reason why Jesus says in our gospel today, come to me all you who labor and find life burdensome? What is Jesus offering that we have not offered our sick brothers and sisters? What is lacking in our health care systems that despite the advances and strides we have made, still create the irony of healing priests, healing mass and healing sessions? Why is Jesus offering himself as the answer in our quest? What is lacking in our healing profession? What is lacking in the way we care for the sick?
Today we come to Jesus. We pray to Jesus. We search the answer in Jesus. So that probably in the future when sickness confronts us in the person of our loved ones and when we too one day have to confront sickness in ourselves, we too can become like Jesus.
We may have provided medicines a lot more sophisticated than we have before, but do we administer that one important need of any ailing person - care. We may have given the sick a lot of x-rays, MRI’s, CAT scans, even prying eyes inside ones stomach but do we also provide the most basic of human need in times of crisis – accompaniment? We may have taken the sick to the best doctor, the most experienced, the most skilled, the most knowledgeable doctor, but have we provided the sick with the most important need of one who is loosing hope fast – assurance, not simply assurance of expertise but assurance in terms of love, of faithfulness, assurance of unconditional love? The world has provided us with an unprecedented control over our destiny that we may have grown self-assured in our belief that we can alter space and time, that we can control the environment we live in and our lives, that we can manipulate genes and effectively wipe out diseases, that we can create things that will alter our way of life – we may have grown so self-assured, the thought of sickness and death comes as a real surprise to us now as it was to the generation before us. In this shocking realization and revelation which sickness brings have we opened the mind of those who are sick among us the need to re-learn to accept things, to embrace the inevitable in loving surrender. Is there a need for us, in situations that call for it, to abandon our self-assured, control freak stance and learn once more self-surrender? Is this irony created by the thought that we are gods, that we live in a fairy tale that always ends happily ever after. Have we lost our humanity in the sense of accepting transitory-ness and impermanency of life and therefore health?
I do not know. I am just shooting at the air hoping I can hit on something worth reflecting on. But this I know for sure, there is something lacking, terribly lacking in the way we view sickness and health, pleasure and suffering, life and death.
Is this the reason why Jesus says in our gospel today, come to me all you who labor and find life burdensome? What is Jesus offering that we have not offered our sick brothers and sisters? What is lacking in our health care systems that despite the advances and strides we have made, still create the irony of healing priests, healing mass and healing sessions? Why is Jesus offering himself as the answer in our quest? What is lacking in our healing profession? What is lacking in the way we care for the sick?
Today we come to Jesus. We pray to Jesus. We search the answer in Jesus. So that probably in the future when sickness confronts us in the person of our loved ones and when we too one day have to confront sickness in ourselves, we too can become like Jesus.
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