ARE YOU READY TO BE HEALED?

TENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME. YEAR A.
June 8, 2008.
(First reading: Hosea 6:3-6) (Psalm 50:1, 8, 12-15)
(Second reading: Romans 4:18-25) (Gospel reading: Matthew 9:9-13)


ARE YOU READY
TO BE HEALED?

It is because evil turns our world into a sick world that Jesus comes to bring us healing.

At Jesus' offer of healing we may respond in two ways:
1. A response that involves an acknowledgment of one's sinfulness and the need to be healed, the need to do away with such sinfulness, to do away with injustice, lies, division, wars and destruction(1).

This response also involves a commitment to become part of Jesus' life. Such is the response of Matthew who when hearing Jesus asking him "'follow me'... he got up and followed him" (Matthew 9:9).

Because of his response, Matthew was healed as he became part of Jesus' life, of Jesus' world: "he sat at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples" (Matthew 9:10).

A person can truly be healed only by accepting unity with God(2). Then, the Lord who liberates us from the sufferings of sin, injustice and division will tell us: "Then call on me in time of distress; I will rescue you, and you shall honor me" (Psalm 50:15).

The way to honor God, then, is by acknowledging our need for healing, by living in unity, peace, mutual understanding and respect for one another.

Healing consists of a break from the past and the start of a new life, a break from a life of injustice and oppression and the beginning of a new life of unity with Christ in whom there is no evil.

2. The other response involves a rejection of the healing of God based on the assumption that there is nothing to be healed. This is the response of those who believe that everything is fine in their lives and in the world.

This response represents a denial of God himself, a believe that the God of justice and peace and compassion and life has no purpose in our life and our world.

The gospel points out that those most in need of the healing of God are precisely the ones who reject such healing: The Pharisees.

Like the Pharisees of biblical times, the Pharisees of today continue to reject Jesus because they believe that they "do not need a physician" (Matthew 9:12).

Let us receive the healing from the Lord Jesus "fully convinced that what he [has] promised he [is] able to do" (Romans 5:21).
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Footnotes.
(1) The acknowledgment of one's sinfulness, is in itself an experience of God's efforts to bring us health.
(2) That unity involves all our being (including our problems and solutions). The notion that we own the problems and God the solutions, is inaccurate, for both problems and solutions belong to God.