A Homily for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

+ “Volo. Mundare.” (I will it. Be healed.)
 
These two words, surely, rank amongst the most beautiful in the Gospel. They form the response to a demand posed by a leper full of humility and faith following the Sermon on the Mount: “Lord, if you will it, you can heal me.”
 
The Church, through her Sacred Liturgy, invites us to meditate upon this encounter. From it are taken the texts of the antiphons of the Benedictus and Magnificat of Lauds and Vespers today. So too, the collect of this Mass resonates the reality it makes manifest: “Look mercifully upon our weakness, and stretch forth the right hand of thy majesty to protect us.”
 
Certainly, there is much here for we sophisticated moderns, whose leprosies are by no means as straightforward or as easily curable, to contemplate.
 
Do I have the faith in Christ’s healing power that is necessary? Or do I languish in despair in the unspoken conviction that my vices and maladies are simply a permanent feature of my life?
 
Am I prepared to accept that His healing may not be exactly that which I ‘ordered,’ as it were? The paralytic brought to Our Lord in the second chapter of the Gospel of Saint Mark was forgiven his sins. His physical healing was added on as a rebuke to the incredulous Pharisees. It is clear that Our Lord prioritised the forgiveness of sins over the relief of bodily suffering. I may be tempted to do otherwise.

Do we have the humility to accept that, perhaps, for some reason, the Lord may not wish to cure us of some malady of body or soul? St Paul teaches us – from his own experience and seemingly bitter struggle – that God’s position is, at times, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9)
 
We cannot necessarily know God’s purpose in permitting our suffering – even (especially!) that suffering which we bring upon ourselves and others through our sins. Perhaps our suffering is the path by which God’s Providence leads us to the faith and humility manifested by the leper. Would he have had such faith were he not suffering so terribly? Regardless, we know that his humble request was rewarded - and that gives us hope, no matter how much or from what we suffer.
 
Our duty, then, is to cultivate the soil in which that humility and faith can take root and grow. This is the business of the conversion of life which, as any monk knows, is a daily duty sustainable only with prayer, the worthy reception of the Sacraments, works of charity, etc. Perseverance in these shall allow faith and humility to flower and bear fruit. And when we are thus disposed, we can ask the Lord to heal us. He shall, for He so wills, if but we ask with the leper's dispositions. +