A Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

+ For a year and a half now the world and its authorities have been preoccupied with protecting people from a virus which has spread rapidly and has caused much suffering and death. Ecclesiastical authorities have readily endorsed measures enacted by secular authorities and, at least at first, themselves cooperated by closing churches and restricting, or even – incredibly – forbidding, access to the sacraments.

It is surely right, indeed it is a duty, for civil authorities to protect people from deadly sicknesses and for ecclesiastical authorities to care for the human person. Our Lord Himself healed many of terrible conditions, including the bed-ridden man cured in the Gospel of this Holy Mass.

Indeed, men and women are created in the image and likeness of God. The Sacrament of Baptism renders our very bodies nothing less than Temples of the Holy Spirit. Life is given to us so that we can praise and glorify God in and through our very bodies (cf. 1 Cor. 6:19-20) through our cooperation with God’s grace which elevates and perfects our human nature. Life and health are goods ordered to this end. For this reason the Church has, since her very beginning, cared for the sick – centuries before governments established social health care systems – and does so to this day where it is possible without undue secular interference. The powerful witness of St Theresa of Calcutta stands closest to us in a line of great saints who gave their all for the care of the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick so that they, too, could praise and glorify God, even in the very midst of great suffering and physical pain.

It is essential, however, that we remember that life and health are goods ordered to the end so succinctly stated in the catechism: to know, love and serve God in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next. Life and health are not ends in themselves. We are not vitalists. Human life does not need to be prolonged at any cost. One could be forgiven for thinking that not only secular authorities, but also ecclesiastical ones, have ignored this truth in recent times, seemingly caring more for the preservation of the health of the body than for the life of the soul.

For there is a sickness that is far greater than any corporeal malady: the sickness of sin. And as St Paul teaches clearly: “the sting of death is sin.” (1 Cor. 15:56) Thus, sin is to be feared more than bodily death. Sin is the cancer which, if allowed to take root and spread within us, will kill the soul (and perhaps the body also). Sin is the virus which has the capacity to render humanity unable to function according to God’s plan.

This is why, when confronted with a bed-ridden man in today’s Gospel Our Blessed Lord says to him, “Son, take courage, your sins are forgiven.” The sick man is given a reality far greater than physical health: the reality of spiritual healing. He is given life even if his body is physically diseased.
​
There is no question that we should and must seek to alleviate sickness and suffering where this is possible. But our first concern must always be for the soul, for the eternal salvation of the person who is ill. This is a truth that cannot and must not be masked. The vitalism rampant in our day is nothing less than a heresy. “Here we have no lasting city … we seek the city which is to come,” (Heb. 13:14) – that is, the eternal City of God. It is therefore unthinkable, indeed a fundamental violation of people’s baptismal rights, to deny people the sacraments – to deny them the very life of God which survives bodily death. Where this has occurred there must needs be repentance and reparation.
 
In Prologue of His Rule of St Benedict teaches that “if we would escape the pains of hell and reach eternal life, then must we, while there is still time, while we are in this body and can fulfil all these things by the light of this life, hasten to do now what may profit us for eternity.” And, drawing upon St Paul and the Prophet Ezekiel, he pleads: “Knowest thou not that the patience of God leadeth thee to repentance? For the merciful Lord saith: I will not the death of a sinner, but that he should be converted and live.”
 
My brothers and sisters this is the life to which we must aspire and towards which we must work with all the strength of our wills. It is the healing from sin which we must seek first. Physical health and healing are goods, but they are subordinate goods in comparison to the supernatural vocation we received at Baptism.
 
At Monday Vespers the Church’s tradition has us sing, “Non mortui laudabunt te, Domine, neque omnes qui descendunt in infernum: sed nos qui vivimus, benedicimus Domino, ex hoc nunc et usque in saeculum.” (The dead do not praise you O Lord, nor do those who descend into hell; but we who live, we bless the Lord, from now and until the end of the ages.” (Ps. 113:25-26) For the grace to do all so that the death of sin may not overtake us, and that we may be amongst those who bless the Lord for eternity, let us pray earnestly in this Holy Mass. +

---