Happy Second Sunday! We’re officially back in the liturgical green of Ordinary Time, and we’ll be here for several weeks until Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent on March 5th. We’re also in the thick of the NFL postseason, and Jesus is obviously rooting for the Lions. I’m submitting this article five days before Detroit hosts the Commanders, so let’s hope it ages well!
I’d like to offer some additional introductory remarks as a follow-up from last week. In the year ahead, my homilies and especially these weekly articles will be peppered with teaching and application on the topic of healing. I haven’t mapped out everything in full, so I’m not completely sure how far this will all go. But I already have about twenty topics lined up, and some of those topics I know will be multi-part. We’ll microwave some popcorn and grab a seat, ya know, see where God takes us.
Why talk about healing at all? What is really the deal? In my mind, I have a few reasons. But the main thrust of it comes down to a simple personal observation: everywhere around us, and I include myself, there exists a real gap between the incredible teachings and promises of the Christian faith (what is possible!), and the real-world faith lives and expectations of Christian believers (what is actually happening). I’d like to explore why.
After all, and by a Grand-Canyon-sized margin, Judeo-Christianity flies far above the fray of all other teachings, religions, worldviews, and philosophies ever recorded by history. It explains the universe, grounds the truth of the sciences, offers a perfect moral teaching, protects the flourishing of human society, illuminates and answers the mystery of all possible human experiences, sufferings, and hopes. Christianity has literal power to “produce [in us] an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”, as St. Paul wrote it. When made perfect, Christians become by grace what God is by nature (#divine). That’s craaazy wild. A believer on earth can live a transformed supernatural prequel to the life of heaven. Sad to say, if you observed the life of an average Christian today, you might not notice that.
Which is all to suggest this. I’m not bumming out on you, myself, or anyone. But I notice that what God offers us in Jesus Christ—even in this life—is evidently far too little understood and accepted. The saints of AD history are proof that any human being can achieve—and in fact is born for! —truly great & wondrous holiness. But I would wager my last dollar that most Christians, and really most people, never reach their God-given potential. And that gives me ‘the sads’. So, what describes the gap between my current life, your current life, and our sainthood? Basically, our need for healing. And our decision to heal.
You want a better life? Start by healing. Wondering what breaks hopeless stagnation? Healing is the doorway. Hoping to make it to heaven? Look no further. All of us must pass through this furnace of God’s immensely generous, holy, perfecting love. And we have the opportunity of a single lifespan to decide for ourselves whether and how much of the divine furnace we choose.
Fr. Brian
