3rd Sunday after Epiphany 22.1.12 My soul shall be healed
The centurion realized that it would be a simple thing for Our Lord to heal the servant, because He had authority over creation. The centurion himself could make men come or go by his word. Our Lord could go further and make the winds and the waves obey Him; make sickness go away; even make death go away and bring back to life!
Not everyone has a sick servant but just about everyone has a sick soul.
What is the soul? The very core of our identity where our secret desires and aspirations for good or evil are found - the best and the worst of our true self.
(Next time someone asks you: How are you? If you answer for the soul you can say I am a conflicting mass of desires and aspirations. Don't ask.)
Our souls need healing so we bring them to the Lord. And we say to Him, By a word You can heal it.
The soul is much harder to heal because it is so complicated in its mixture of good and evil.
Speak the word, whatever word is necessary. Lord, You have all power, even over whatever is lurking down there, whatever bad habits I have picked, up whatever structural damage I have done by sin over the years... whatever it is you can heal it.
What word is it that He has to speak? He has already spoken it many times over - in the Gospels; in the Church’s teachings; in a thousand sermons we have already heard.
Love your neighbour, forgive your enemy, feed the hungry, seek first the kingdom, praise God with all your voice.. and many more.
Do any of these things and your soul will be partially healed. Do them all and it will be fully healed.
But we ask for more than this. We are asking for a direct act of intervention by God that He would reach down and touch our soul; that He would heal us right here and now, even in this Mass of all that is wrong with us in that spiritual sense.
He is willing to do that. We cannot always be sure He wants to heal the body but we can be sure that He never desires us to sin or to remain in sin. He must want to heal us at that level.
Yet we discover a resistance in ourselves. We might deny that we need healing. Many would deny they have any sickness. People say their soul isn’t sick because their soul is sick!
We might be unwilling to be healed; as much as we know it would be better for us.
Part of the damage we have done to our souls is that we have developed a desire for sin, like an addiction. We want to be freed and we want to stay captive at the same time.
We can come anyway and say, Lord, overrule me even in my resistance or my denial; sweep it all away. Override my will. I give you even that.
Speak the word that will make me want to be healed; the word that will give me a greater sense of Your reality and goodness.
We cling to sin because we sense in some way it will make us happy. But if we have a choice between two things that will make us happy we will choose the one that gives more.
Sin has muddled us so that we misjudge which course is better. One option brings a lot of trouble the other great peace and joy. Let me see clearly and then let me choose, by which time I will choose rightly.
So we are saying a lot there in those few words. Domine, non sum dignus
We admit the sickness and we are closer to receiving the healing.
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