For the
first few years after I was ordained a priest I worked as a hospital
chaplain. It was a good but difficult experience. All day
long I was dealing with sickness and death. It probably sounds
strange but until then I never realized that so many people died in
hospital. Many people are brought to hospital when they are
dying, so understandably many people die in hospitals, but it was not
how I had thought of hospitals up to that point. The most
difficult case I had to deal with was a young girl of about 12 who
was very sick and eventually died. I remember feeling so
helpless and useless when she died. Every time I read the story
of Jesus raising the little girl from the dead I am reminded of that
girl and her family.
Throughout
his ministry on earth Jesus only brought a few people back to life,
although He healed many people who were sick. Do you wonder
sometimes why He didn’t heal more people, or why didn’t He raise
many more from the dead? I’m sure it would have convinced
many more people of who He was. I am sure that the reason He didn’t
heal more people physically is because it was not the main purpose of his mission. When you think about it, all the people He
healed and even raised from the dead all died later at some stage.
But what could possibly be more important that healing people and
taking their sickness away?
Jesus
healed those He encountered out of compassion for them, but his
mission was teaching the people about God, about how God loves us and
what our life is about. Having a sense of what our life is
about is actually more important than being physically well, because
if we don’t understand what our life is about then we will find it
very difficult to keep going when things are going wrong. One
of the great tragedies of our time is to see so many people having no
hope and then taking their own lives. This is not what the Lord
wants for us.
During
his life on earth Jesus taught the people about the reality of life after death,
of not getting too caught up with things that are not important.
He taught the people about the Father in heaven and how He loves us
and has created us out of love. Ultimately His mission was to
sacrifice himself for us, so that our sins could be forgiven, so that
we could experience total happiness with God when we die. The
priest says this in every mass at the consecration, repeating the
words of Jesus: ‘This is the cup of my Blood… it will be shed for
you and for many so that sins may be forgiven.’ That
is why the mass is so powerful, because in each mass we become
present to the event of Jesus’ death on the cross, so that sins
may be forgiven. Time stands still and we are there.
It is a wonderful thing that God allows us to be there.
The
Lord is teaching us that there is a reason for us being here. Our
life has a purpose and a meaning and is of great value. Each of
us has a value so enormous to God that Jesus who is God, allowed
himself to be sacrificed on our behalf. That is an
extraordinary thought, but it is true.
The
reason why we are here is because God created us out of love in order
that we might share God’s happiness when we die. Hopefully we will begin to experience it in this life, but it will only be fulfilled in the next. But first we
have to learn about God and then we have to freely choose for God or
not. Our time on earth is a time of love and service. We
are free to love or not to love, to serve or not to serve and most of
us do this by raising families, or simply by trying to do what is
right from day to day. But every day we are making choices for
God or not by what we do. If we have a sense of this, then it
can help us to keep going even when we are suffering, or sick, or
things are difficult, because we know it is not forever and we know
there is something wonderful waiting for us and so it is worth
enduring when things are difficult. We will understand it all
when we die, but for now it is hidden from us and part of the
suffering we go through in this life is the fact that we cannot see
the bigger picture; most of the time it remains hidden from us.
Sickness is something that none of us want, but having no sense of
worth or what our life is about can be far worse because it can lead
to despair. It is a terrible thing to see people having no hope
and it is also amazing to see what people can endure when they have a
sense of what this life is about.
In
both the first reading and the Gospel today, people are brought back
to life, because the Lord loves us. Each miracle was a sign;
the first was a sign that Elijah was a man of God; the second miracle
was a sign to the people that Jesus is God. The miracles
confirmed that God was with them, but in both cases Elijah and Jesus
then continued on with their mission to teach people about God and
help us know what our life is about. We are called to love God
and each other and to serve as best we can while we are here on
earth. And when our time here is complete the Lord will bring
us home to him and then we will know that all we went through was
worth while.
'Amen. Come Lord Jesus.'
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