healing

May the light of Jesus help to heal us from our blindness.

As Christians we are often called, along with Jews and Muslims, the people of the Book. This is in reference to our sacred texts, the Torah, the Qu’ran, and the Bible. In actuality, Christians are not a people of the Book, nor is Christianity merely an idea, philosophy, even a theology, or series of practices. Christianity and being a Christian is about an encounter with a person. That person is Jesus the Christ.

If we do not know Jesus, then the words of our Bible just become dead letters, our philosophy and theology are just intellectual exercises, and our religious observances provide little meaning or relevance for our lives. Our presence in Mass or Church can just be something we do or motions we go through.

This could be why for every one person who joins the Catholic Church today six to eight people are leaving. People leave for their own reasons, but the underlying cause could be that in their experience of Church they are not encountering Jesus, they are not feeling welcomed or a part of a community that cares about them, and/or maybe in their daily lives they are not building, nor are they aware of how to build and sustain a relationship with Jesus.

Each of us hunger and thirst to experience and know the living God. Each and every one of us seek meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in our lives. We have been created to be loved and to love, we have been created to belong, to be a part of, and to be in relationship. We live, crave, and desire to be in relationship with God and one another, and this is true for the atheist and the mystic alike.

In our Gospel reading from Luke today, Jesus is speaking to his disciples, those who have encountered him and said yes to following him. They have witnessed his exorcisms, healings, and teachings beyond the realm of comprehension. Jesus continues to guide them and believe in them even when they come up short time and again. Jesus is finishing up his Sermon on the Plain and doing so with parables that are more like proverbs.

What we heard or read today is that a blind person cannot lead a blind person, otherwise both will fall into the pit (cf. Luke 6:39-40). Jesus is speaking about more than physical sight, but spiritual sight. We all have some level of spiritual blindness. We are blind to have blind spots when we are unwilling or not able to see those thoughts, behaviors, and desires within ourselves that keep us from deepening our relationship with Jesus. Jesus invites us to experience his love, to receive his healing touch, to bask in the light of his grace so that we might see the sins he seeks to reveal to us.

Jesus meets us where we are and loves us as we are. When we receive his love, we experience that he loves us, as we are, with all of our faults, mistakes, sins, wounds, and insecurities. We can feel safe and trust in Jesus, and as we do we will experience an unconditional love beyond anything we ever thought possible. We can then welcome his healing touch, let our guard down, and lower our defenses. As we heal, we can see our sinful actions more clearly and realize the habitual vices we have allowed to develop that were fed by apparent goods, wounds, empty promises, and unhealthy attachments. We can let go of the shame.

As we experience the love of Jesus, we can then confess and allow the knots of our sins to be loosed, and feel more comfortable to let God into all the areas of our life. When this begins to happen our lives begin to change, we are transformed from the place of only focusing on our selves, our fears, and our own needs, and begin to be aware of the needs of others. We can then realize that we do have a choice, we don’t have to continue being led by the false promises, insecurities, and fears that we have reacted to. We can choose to be disciples, led back into the land of the living led by our Teacher and Lord, Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God.

How then do we come to know, build, and sustain a relationship with this Teacher, this Jesus?

We do so by spending time each day reading, meditating, praying with, and contemplating God’s word. I remember reading from the Gospel of Luke 12:22 when I was about seventeen. The passage talked about not worrying about your life. I then felt God speak to me. He said that I would never win the lotto, but he would always provide work for me. My wife, JoAnn, and I used to read the daily readings of the Mass each evening together and then I would read a reflection such as this one. In this way, this living word of God became alive for us. Through this daily practice, JoAnn and I drew closer to God and each other.

As we step closer to Lent, we have the opportunity to allow the light of Jesus to shine even more brightly in our lives. We can do so by spending five to ten minutes a day in quiet prayer, meditating on a Gospel reading, asking Jesus to guide us, to help to see the relevance in his teachings, healings, and exorcisms for our lives. We can speak with him as the disciples did, thank him for our blessings, and just be still and breathe, opening up our hearts and minds so to be led by him. We can ask Jesus to reveal to us our sins, we can ask him to help us to remove the log in our own eye, so that we can see more clearly to help another to remove the splinter in their eye.

We encounter Jesus by learning about our faith through reading and praying with the Bible, studying the Catechism, and reading the lives of the saints, as well as other spiritual reading, videos, podcasts and the like. Examining our consciences daily with the Ten Commandments as well as well as a list of the seven capital sins can help us to better identify, renounce, and confess our sins. Praying reflectively and slowly, the Our Father or pondering with Mary the mysteries or one mystery of the Rosary can also be practices that slow us down so we can spend more time with Jesus.

When temptations arise along with the dance of negative thoughts, we can bring them to Jesus also. When a judgmental thought, urge to gossip, to say something that is negative arises, we can stop and take a few slow, deep breaths, seek Jesus in that first moment as the poison arises. By slowing down and asking for Jesus’ help we can side step our automatic reaction response and better choose instead to think and say the good things that people need to hear, things that will be instructive, empowering, and hopeful. Convicting if need be, but resisting condemnation. Our temptations will also have less power because we can more clearly see their false allure by choosing to stand out from the shadows and in the light of Jesus.

We can encounter Jesus by allowing our hearts and minds to be open to respond when he moves us to reach out to be present to someone with our thoughts, words, and actions, even in simple ways such as sharing a smile, making the time to listen, or offering support or assistance in the moment of another’s need, even when it is not convenient, or the best time for an interruption.

We can encounter Jesus in the sacraments, especially the Mass, through the word proclaimed, the music, in our fellowship together, and especially, in the Eucharist, Jesus’ Body and Blood that we will receive. This is a sacred moment of encounter with Jesus and his Mystical Body coming together as one.

Each of these examples are small, practical ways that we all can encounter Jesus in our daily lives. Jesus is already reaching out to us, inviting us to be in relationship with him and his Father. This encounter and building our relationship with him is not only for ourselves but as we come to experience, develop and deepen our relationship with Jesus, as we experience his love and mercy and how his grace builds on our nature, we heal, we are less lured by temptations, we realize that sin and death no longer have the hold they had on us.

If we have some trouble coming to Jesus, let us reach out to his mother who reflects the light and love of her Son. She will lead us gently so we can experience him and his love for us. Jesus will then become more present in our lives, heal us from our blindness and we can begin to see and share, that which is truly good, true, and beautiful. As we are willing to see our sins, renounce and confess them, and through our participation in the life of Jesus, we will be forgiven, healed, and can breathe more freely. We will be able to then remove the log from our own eyes and better be able to get closer to help others to remove the splinter from their eyes.

Mary, help us to pray for each other, support and be present to one another in our everyday experiences, wrap your mantle around us with your loving embrace so that we can feel safe and open our hearts and minds to receive the loving embrace of God our Father. Help us to trust in, listen, and follow the guidance of your Son. May we then be willing to allow the flame of the Holy Spirit to catch fire and rise within each of us such that we may go forth and set the world aflame with God’s love.

Photo: Mary reflects the light of Jesus and we are invited to be healed and do the same. Great to be back in our church to worship this weekend!

Link for the Mass readings for Sunday, March 2, 2025

When we trust in the Lord, we will be healed and be able to see and hear.

In today’s Gospel from Mark, Jesus healed a blind man. Like the healing of the deaf man (cf. Mk 7:31-37), Jesus again used his own saliva in the healing process showing the intimacy and closeness of each encounter. The difference this time is that this man does not receive a full and complete healing the first time. Jesus laid hands on the man’s eyes a second time and he saw clearly; his sight was restored and he could see everything distinctly (Mk 8:25).

Often with Jesus, there are instant healings, as well as healing by his word alone. What might be happening with this need for a double healing? Maybe it is because Jesus meets each person where they are at. He invites us into the process of healing and each person has a different response, even to the point of saying no to the invitation to heal. Remember how Jesus was only able to heal a few people while in his own home town of Nazareth?

We need to read the two miraculous healings of the deaf and blind men deeper than the literal physical healings. Each of us suffers from both spiritual deafness and blindness to some degree. Jesus revealed this with his disciples on the boat ride over to Bethsaida when they did not understand his teaching on the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod. We come to hear and see God’s will for us gradually.

As I shared a few days ago if we knew God’s intention for us early on, we might be crushed with the weight of our own doubt! If someone had told me when I was in high school that I would be a teacher, later a deacon, and now a priest, teaching and preaching coherently, I would have quietly retreated to a stand of white birch across from the old oak tree in the field behind my parent’s house until that idea passed.

Yet, Jesus met me on my level. Sometime around my junior of high school, he invited me through an interim pastor to teach Sunday school to a class of three. About a year later I gave a children’s sermon to the youth and the small congregation. The summer after my freshman year of college, I began to work second shift as a certified nurse’s aide and during my sophomore year of college, after following the urge to take a search in education course, I switched my major from psychology to elementary education. After graduation, my first teaching position was not in the four walls of a classroom, but six hundred eighty acres at the Sharon Audubon Center as an environmental education specialist.

I began to interact with people, Jesus drew me out of my own self-centered posture, and I began to grow and mature. I would eventually enter the classroom when we moved to Florida in 1997 to teach, first in public school for five years and then through JoAnn’s guidance, I applied for a substitute position at Rosarian Academy in WPB, where I would spend the next eight years teaching middle school religion. While at Rosarian, I also entered the permanent deacon program and was ordained a deacon in 2013 and then would go on to teach at Cardinal Newman HS for nine more years.

Each of these experiences of saying yes to Jesus was my willingness to be healed and lead gently. Certainly, with the loss of JoAnn, my foundation had been shaken, but Jesus continued to lead me and helped me to discern my next step which was returning to seminary for two years and then fortunate to be ordained this past May as a priest and I’m blessed to be serving now and typing these words from my office at Holy Cross Catholic Church.

The journey continues for each of us, and we are invited to trust in Jesus and be led by his guidance into healing and service. As he has guided me, I trust that he will do the same for each of you. We just need to have our eyes and ears open for his healing touch. He is not done with any of us yet!

Photo: Full moon rising during Rosary walk back in November.

Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, February 19, 2025

“Ephphatha!”

Those who witnessed Jesus healing the man who was deaf with a speech impediment grasped something more than just the healing when they stated: “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” (Mk 7:37). With these words, they were acknowledging the deliverance of Israel by the Lord, promised by the prophet Isaiah, when he mentioned how, “the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf will be cleared” (Isaiah 35:5).

The beauty of this healing may be missed by us in the modern age because of the graphic nature of the details used by Mark. Jesus places his fingers in the man’s ears, spits into his own hands, and then touches the man’s tongue. Jesus is mixing his own saliva with this man in need of healing. We don’t even share drinks from the same bottle anymore as we used to do when we were kids! While in the shadow of Covid, this imagery can seem incomprehensible!

Yet, what Jesus is showing is the intimacy of communion that he offers us. He gave the very essence of his own being, his own saliva and mingled it with this man’s saliva. This physical teaching is an image or icon, of how the Son of God, in no way diminishing the fullness of his divinity, entered into the very real corporality of our humanity. He became one with us so that we can become one with him. This was true then and it is still true for us today!

This is also especially true because as with Jesus healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter yesterday, this man too is not a Jew but a Gentile. In each of their healings, the good news is not only being proclaimed now beyond the Jewish people but also they represent that they and all people are given access to God through Jesus. The eyes and ears of all will be opened to the glory of God’s message and invitation to relationship.

We all suffer physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual trials. But we also suffer from not being able to hear God’s word, and so are mute in speaking his word. Jesus, even if he does not provide a healing or an immediate solution, is present in our lives. We are invited to consciously resist the temptation of avoiding our own suffering, pain, or challenges and instead are invited to embrace and enter into them. We are not expected to do this alone, but to bring our need for healing to Jesus. In this way, we are aligning our suffering with his on the Cross. When we choose to offer up our pain and suffering on behalf of another, we participate in redemptive suffering. Others can experience relief and healing from our sacrifice in participation with Jesus.

This act of the will gives meaning to our suffering such that we do not endure what we are going through in vain. May we face, head-on, that which rises before us, actualizing the guidance of Jesus as well as the advances of modern medicine, science, and psychology, embracing a posture that engages both faith and reason. Our approach will be best if we are more mindful and balanced with our discernment. Just masking struggles without dealing with the root cause will only prolong and possibly worsen the condition.

Jesus seeks to heal us at the core root of our wounds as well by saying to us: “Ephphatha!” so that we too can hear his word, speak his word, and be more present to and love one another. Jesus wants to heal others through us. With ears more open to the voice of God, we become more aware of the needs of others. The best gift of healing we can offer to one another is to be present and really listen to and hear them, such that they have experienced being heard and loved. When we are open to hearing others and God, we will also then receive his guidance on best how to help one another.

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Picture: Icon of Jesus healing the man deaf and mute – Artist unknown.

Link for the Mass readings for Friday, February 14, 2025

To touch only the tassel of his cloak…

“Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed” (Mk 6:56).

The people of Jesus’ time were in need of healing, hungry to draw closer to God, often searching, wandering, and wounded. That some begged only to touch the tassel on his cloak is interesting. Had the story of the faith of the woman with the hemorrhage for twelve years who courageously reached out and touched the tassel of his cloak and was healed spread? Had the woman herself shared her story and inspired others who had all but lost hope to seek out Jesus?

Even though there was a lull in the momentum when Jesus’ healed only a few in his hometown, and Mark paused in his account to share the flashback of John the Baptist’s death, Jesus has not slowed and people continue to seek his healing. The apostles also have been sent to bring healing and with success. Though Jesus is not as visible to us as he was to those in the land of Gennesaret, he is just as present if not closer, especially in the sacraments, to us today. “Jesus is still the great Physician of our souls and bodies. In the power of the Holy Spirit he continues his work of healing and salvation through the Church, especially in the two sacraments of healing: Penance and the Anointing of the Sick” (Healy, 134).

Let us also not forget the gift of Jesus present in the Mass. After experiencing the word proclaimed at Mass as his disciples heard Jesus teach with authority and receiving his Body and Blood, we are not to go home as if nothing of any significance just happened. Jesus invites us to his banquet weekly, and daily, to encounter him so that in receiving his love and his presence, we may be transformed and go forth to bring Jesus who we have received to others. We are also to see Jesus present in others who are in need.

Pope Francis was asked in an interview by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., in 2013, “What does the church need most at this historic moment?” And Pope Francis answered, “that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle.” We need to be “near”, in the same “proximity”, to bear Christ to one another: “The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all.”

As in the time Jesus walked among the people of Galilee and they came to him seeking healing, we and so many are in need today. May we seek to breathe, rest in, and receive God’s love and healing, sot that we may be then present, have compassion like Jesus and draw near to those who Jesus sends us. May we resist the temptation to keep others at a distance and refuse to be indifferent to the needs of those he brings to us in their time of need. May we too, in the words of Pope Francis, go out to “heal the wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful” by being willing to accompany others in their sorrows, anxiety, trials, and tribulations.

People are hurting. We are not necessarily called to fix others or their problems but to be present, to listen, to hear, and to allow the Holy Spirit to speak and love through us at the appropriate time, so that, in the end, we do not prevent people from encountering Jesus, but provide a means for them to encounter the divine Physician. Maybe we can be the tassel on the cloak of Jesus to help others to experience his healing.

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Photo: Do we have the faith to seek healing from Jesus and also to be a link for Jesus to heal others?

Healy, Mary. The Gospel of Mark. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.

Spadaro, S.J., Antonio. “A Big Heart Open to God: An interview with Pope Francis”. America Magazine. September 30, 2013 Issue: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2013/09/30/big-heart-open-god-interview-pope-francis

Link for the Mass for Monday, February 10, 2025

“Do not be afraid, just have faith.”

“Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who has touched my clothes'” (Mk 5:30)? The woman could have slipped away, she could have stood still and said nothing, no one knew. His disciples were bewildered that Jesus asked such a question with so many pressing about him. But the woman approached with “fear and trembling” and told him the truth. Jesus did not admonish her for breaking a social taboo but publicly acknowledged her faith and so empowered her with a deeper healing than the merely physical that she sought.

All the while as this scene transpired, Jairus must have been in agony. He knew how close his daughter was to death, and every second counted. Jesus took that limited, precious time and engaged with this woman. Just as they were about to resume their journey, and he began to breathe again, the terrible news came that his daughter had passed away.

What might have flashed through his mind at that moment? The time Jesus took to talk with the woman, could that have made the difference? He was a synagogue official and would have known the taboos she crossed to reach out and touch Jesus in public, he knew that in doing so she would make Jesus unclean, she was a woman considered the lowest of low. She was frail and pallid from her condition, at death’s door herself, yet she had mustered such courage and faith to touch him. She took such a risk. While these or any other thoughts were passing through his mind, Jesus assured him, “Do not be afraid, just have faith” (Mk 5:36).

Jairus had just witnessed such faith with the woman healed from the hemorrhage, probably someone until this very moment for whom he might have shown disdain for. Maybe just maybe, if he could muster the same faith as her. Jesus could bring his daughter back to life just as Jesus had brought this woman, who was death’s door back to life and wholeness. A light shone in the darkness of his despair and the darkness did not overcome it. He would not be let down. Jesus indeed healed his daughter. He took her hand as he had done with Peter’s mother-in-law, and commanding her to rise and walk, she came back to life.

How many of us have ourselves or have ever known someone who has experienced such great needs as did Jairus, whose twelve-year old daughter died, or the woman who had been suffering for twelve years with hemorrhages, with no healing from doctors all this time? In both of these cases Jesus brought about miraculous healings. How many of us have experienced the opposite? No healing that we prayed for. We wondered where Jesus was or why he didn’t bother to help? The truth is Jesus is present, though he may or may not have brought about the outcome we may have sought.

February 2 marked five years and five months since JoAnn died. She was not healed from the pancreatic cancer that ate away at her body, as was the woman with the hemorrhage. Nor did Jesus come to raise JoAnn from the dead, as he did for Jaurus’ daughter, while I laid by her side and held her hand awaiting the funeral home to pick up her body. Does that mean Jesus does not heal anymore or that there is no relevance in the readings of the Gospel of Mark for us today?

No. Quite the opposite. Entering into the daily rhythm of reading, praying with, and meditating upon these accounts helps us to know him not as a historical figure but to encounter him as our Lord and Savior, brother and friend, who is present with us in this and each moment. As we enter into each passage, slowly and prayerfully, we are invited to enter into his memory, receive his direction and guidance. Over these five and a half years, I have healed, become aware of further areas in need of healing, attachments to let go of, and Jesus has helped me each step of the way. No step has been easy, but Jesus has given me the guidance and strength to make each one possible.

Read again prayerfully today’s account. May we pray for the courage and faith to approach Jesus and place all our trust in him for each situation as this woman did. When we struggle, when the ground feels a bit shaky underneath, let us take to heart and believe in the words that Jesus spoke to Jairus, “Do not be afraid, just have faith (Mk 5:36). When we place our trust and faith in Jesus, who is truly with us through it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly, we will experience his love, direction, and strength with each step we take along the way.

Photo: JoAnn received an even greater healing and I believe now that Jesus did come that day. He took JoAnn by the hand, and she like Jairus’ daughter arose to be with him for all eternity. 

Link for the Mass readings for Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Jesus is stronger than any evil and will free us from anything that binds us.

Jesus and his disciples have entered the Gentile territory of the Gerasenes. As soon as they get out of the boat a man possessed by an unclean spirit rushes up to him. He himself was in a worse state than the storm that Jesus had stilled. He called himself Legion as he was possessed by many demons. He had been living in the tombs, away from society, family, and friends, some of whom had made multiple attempts to restrain him, cure him, bring him back to his right mind, but to no avail. The encounter with Jesus ultimately brought about the result of this man “sitting there clothed and in his right mind” (Mk 5:15). Jesus was able to liberate this man from his desperate state. If you have not done so, I recommend reading the full account (Mk 5:1-20).

Many scoff at the healing power and miracles of Jesus, and they certainly would also discount demonic possession. Though rare, there are still cases today. A strict approach of scientism that only accepts the empirical, only that which can be measured by the five senses, discounts not only the divinity of Jesus and the reality of God but any talk of a spiritual realm. This is unfortunate because this is a limited approach to understanding the fullness of creation. We ourselves are both physical and spiritual. A healthy embrace and experience of both will help us to better appreciate and understand the world around us.

Too many today are in the same need of experiencing the liberating power of Jesus as the Gerasene. Just as chaotic and tumultuous, especially among too many of our youth, are those who are consumed and imprisoned by the vice grip of addiction. Family members and friends reach out desperately to help, to provide aid, and find themselves in the same situation as those who sought to care for this man who had been living in the tombs. Somehow this man caught “sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him” (Mk 5:6). There must have been some ember at the core of who he was that could still move and bring himself to Jesus.

Far too many are suffering, bound, and shackled by a wide range of addictions, obsessions, disordered affections, and oppressions that plague far too many today, as well as the rare cases of possessions. Evil seeks to distort, disfigure, divide, dehumanize, and separate all of us from the goodness and wholeness that God intends. This growing epidemic damages individuals, families, and friends and could benefit from a unified approach of the best that science, psychology, counseling, prayer, the sacraments, spiritual direction, and when needed, exorcisms can offer.

Jesus can reach into even the deepest darkness of our internal entanglements and help to reveal any disordered affections. Yet we must choose, as did the Gerasene demoniac, to surrender to Jesus. May we resist the temptation to flee from him, and instead run into his open arms. Resting in the grip of his loving embrace, we will come to know that we are not alone in our suffering, that our deepest anguish, sin, and wounds can be healed.

Jesus is stronger than any evil that seeks to bind and separate any of us. He shared this in his parable of “tying up the strong man” (Mark 3:27) which is on vivid display as he casts out Legion from the Gerasene man. Let us continue to place our trust in the name of and the power of Jesus and intercede for all those who are suffering from any form of disordered affections, addictions, and/or afflictions emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually. May Jesus lead all of us to experience deliverance and freedom from any affliction no matter how small or large, so that we may experience the right ordering of our minds, hearts, and souls to God’s will, and like the Gerasene man, not only experience the fullness of his healing but also go to share the good news of our experiences to help to bring the invitation of healing to others.

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Photo: Not even the strongest of chains can bind us when we seek the healing power of Jesus to free us.

Link for the Mass readings for Monday, February 3, 2025

Jesus is our light, love, and salvation.

The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons” (Mark 3:22).

The scribes, coming in from Jerusalem, most likely to investigate the happenings of this Jesus they have been hearing about, experience for themselves Jesus exorcising demons. They do not nor seem to want to understand how he is able to cast them out and thus healing those possessed. They judge that he does this feat, not by the power of God, but instead, by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. Could their purpose be to delegitimize, or literally demonize, Jesus in such a way that those beginning to follow him will begin to doubt or outright turn away from him? If Jesus is who he says he is, then the scribes are actually the ones serving Satan in aligning with him to sow discord and disunity.

Jesus provides an invitation to build bridges of reconciliation and healing to restore the unity that has been lost by those choosing to sin, to put self first over God. He also meets those on the peripheries, those who have been kept at arm’s length, healing those conditions which have been used to justify their separation. Yet Jesus does not impose, he proposes. Even so, Jesus demands a choice.

Jesus shows over and over again by word and deed not only how he is creating a bridge of connection between the human and the divine, he is in actuality the bridge, the kingdom of God in our midst, and yet, he is not going to drag anyone over against their will. Jesus calls all who encounter him to make a choice, there is no middle ground, we are either for him or against him.

We have witnessed in the Gospel accounts how some of the scribes, Pharisees, and even some of his own relatives reject Jesus. He is able to perform only a few miracles in his own hometown. Those who say no to the invitation cut themselves off, separate themselves from the very source of their life, the very core and sustaining force of their being. Those who say, “yes’ and repent, like those that receive his healing, will be transformed, and are freed from their enslavement to sin.

When they continue to say, “yes”, day by day, decision by decision, they align themselves with the very source and communion they have been created for, God the Father. This is no one revelatory moment but a daily commitment of saying, “yes” to Jesus. Even when we mess up or fall for temptation, let us refuse to stay down but arise, repent, and begin again and again. We must always and everywhere reject the lie that echoes in our minds that we cannot be forgiven. Jesus loves us more than we can ever mess up, he loves us more than our worst choices or mistakes, more than our most grievous sins, and he will forgive us time and again, as long as we are contrite, seek his help to sin no more, and are willing to perform the penance to atone for our sins.

If this is true, then what does Jesus mean when he says, “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an ever lasting sin” (Mk 3:29)? Jesus refers here to our free will to accept or reject the free gift of his grace. We can observe this played out in the choices of Peter and Judas. Peter repented, was forgiven, and transformed. Judas withdrew within himself, cut himself off from Jesus, did not believe that Jesus would forgive him, and took his own life. Jesus would have forgiven Judas as he had Peter, but Judas kept himself at a distance. He refused to accept the love of the Holy Spirit. He cut himself off from the very source of his life and salvation.

We have a choice to make each day. We can let ourselves be defined by our sins and our worst mistakes, believe the father of lies who promotes division and isolation, tempts and seeks to condemn us, separate us from Jesus and one another, with the intent to kill us. We can walk the path of darkness which consists of living defensively, keep others at a distance, demean, belittle, and degrade others, as well as live in the shadows of indifference and cynicism.

Or we can surrender our will to Jesus, accept his guidance and conviction so that we can see our sins and repent from our pride, prejudice, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, and wrath. We can believe that Jesus is who he said he is, seek his forgiveness, healing, and love, and join in the mission of sharing his gospel.

As we do so, we will take steps forward and steps back, and we stumble and we will fall, but through each experience, the hand of Jesus is still there to help us back up. When we are willing, we will be forgiven again and again, and begin again and again. We are not alone. Mary the Mother of God and all the saints said, “yes” to Jesus’ invitation. They understand what we are going through. They are also cheering us on, guiding us, empowering us, so that one day we too will be where they are, seeing God the Father face to face. Until that time, while we are still here this side of heaven, let us breathe, receive, rest, and abide in God’s love so to radiate his Son’s light and love, in our own unique way.

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Photo: A quiet moment to breathe and receive the love of Jesus.

Link for the Mass readings for Monday, January 27, 2025

In our encounter and deepening of our relationship with Jesus we experience love, peace, and joy!

After the most recent clash with those Pharisees bent now on killing Jesus, he “withdrew toward the sea”, the Sea of Galilee. After his entanglements with the Pharisees, he may have sought refuge or a quieter setting away from the crowds. Yet, the people followed. Mark details in his account that many from all over the region came to Jesus to be healed. Among the crowd, unclean spirits threw those they possessed down before Jesus. This did not slow the gathering of people who pressed in on Jesus, just to touch him. The mass of people grew to a point that it was getting out of control so Jesus “told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him” (Mk 3:9).

People wanted to be healed, to be cured, to be exorcised, and brought others to experience the same. Yet they were missing the deeper point of who Jesus is. He was not just a miracle worker, not just someone that brought about physical healing. Healing accounts were heard and known about in the ancient world.  The unclean spirits got it, they recognized Jesus before the people did, “for, whenever unclean spirits saw him they would fall down before him and shout, ‘You are the Son of God'” (Mk 3:11).

They were bound by the authority of Jesus to be renounced. They had to obey him and in calling out who he was they were attempting to control him with no effect. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, we will read about how the crowds, disciples, and even the apostles, all struggle to understand who Jesus is. The people closed in on Jesus seeking to be healed, but missed the deeper hunger within their souls that St Augustine, the fourth-century bishop of Hippo, so eloquently described on the first page of his autobiography: “[Y]ou have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you” (Augustine 1963, 17). Jesus is the Son of God, not just a miracle worker, teacher, or healer, but God Incarnate.

The only way we will be fully satisfied, inspired, fully alive, and be at peace within our own skin, is by developing an ongoing, deepening relationship, and communion with our Father. God is infinite and cannot be exhausted. We as finite beings are left wanting even when we have the best of material things. We always hunger and want for more, because in the depths of our very being, whether we recognize it or not, we want God. The many who came to Jesus for healing, were not aware of the deeper hunger and healing they sought.

The deeper healing that Jesus seeks to offer all of us is to restore us to the fullness of who his Father created us to be. To do that, we must be willing to embrace the truth, the way, and the life that he offers us. Which means that we will need to let go of anything that does not align with his invitation. At the first, we may be taken aback because of our attachments. We need not be afraid. Jesus works slowly. His light shines gently that we might see what is keeping us from growing in our relationship with him and each other.

Jesus conquered death and freed us to abide in an authentic love expressed at a deeper, more intimate level than we can ever imagine. Jesus satisfies our deepest hunger as he invites us to be drawn into his grace-filled embrace so as to be healed, renewed, shaped, and conformed to his heart, mind, and will. When we come to this place of encounter, reconciliation, and intimate relationship, we come to know our mission and in serving through that mission we come to know who and whose we truly are. In that place is our greatest joy and it only gets better the more we receive and share his love!

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Drawing by: First weekend Mass about six months ago. Feel blessed and joy filled to overflowing each day as I continue to build relationships here at my new home of Holy Cross Catholic Church, grow as a disciple of Jesus, and serve as his priest!

St Augustine. The Confessions of St Augustine. Translated by Rex Warner. New York: New American Library, 1963.

Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, January 23, 2025.

May we resist the hardening our hearts and allow ourselves instead to be moved with compassion.

In today’s Gospel scene, Jesus enters the synagogue and sees a man with a withered hand. The eyes of the Pharisees are on him to see if, yet again, Jesus will heal on the Sabbath. Jesus is clear in his mind what he is going to do, though before doing so, he calls the man up and asks the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it” (Mk 3:4)?

Jesus here is giving them a no-brainer of a question. Of course, one is to do good rather than evil on the Sabbath, to save life rather than destroy it! Yet, the Pharisees remain silent. Jesus expresses anger and grief. This may not only be an obvious question but more Jesus could be meeting the Pharisees on the ground of Scripture that they are using against Jesus. 1 Maccabees 2:41 records the account of the Maccabeans deciding to take up arms on the Sabbath to defend themselves against attack. With this in mind, Jesus may be appealing to those Pharisees that were challenging him to choose to see the healing of this man as a greater good. Unfortunately, their “their hardness of heart” shows they were not appreciative of the scriptural assistance.

At the peak of this fifth conflict in Marl, may we stop and imagine ourselves present in the synagogue and witnessing Jesus looking at the Pharisees and the Pharisees looking back at him. Ever been present when tensions were very high and there was dead silence? Imagine what was going through the mind of the guy standing in between them with the withered hand?!!!

The anger rising in Jesus may have had to do with the unwillingness of the Pharisees to show any compassion at all for this man. That they would hold so tightly to their self-righteous stance to refuse to even have a discussion about the matter. Not even to say in effect, “Yes, Jesus of course, it is lawful to do good, to save a life but what you are doing is unorthodox.” No. They refuse to dialogue. Their faces are set like flint, they dig in their heels. Even though Jesus is inviting them to take just a step to consider another alternative, they instead harden their hearts. In their silence, they are choosing evil over good, to destroy life rather than saving it. Pride has reared its grotesque head.

Jesus breaks the silence as he says to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”

The man is healed, but instead of rejoicing, and sharing the good news as Andrew did with his brother Simon, the Pharisees leave immediately to find the Herodians and begin to plot to not only undo Jesus but “to put him to death.” They who would refuse to see a mean healed on the Sabbath, did not hesitate to plan someone’s death on the Sabbath.

We have witnessed in today’s Gospel the evil of pride. We have witnessed the mercy of God presented and rejected. As is stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit” (1864). That is what Jesus is angry about. Not only do the Pharisees resist any move in the slightest direction toward compassion, or their own repentance, they further separate themselves from the love of God. They start with a principle of defending the law, and walk out seething with a premeditated intent to kill Jesus, and on the Sabbath!

With each choice of putting self over another, pride grows. Its appetite is insatiable. Pride is known as the mother of all sins because of its disordered focus on self at the expense of all others and all else. The deadliest component of which is in direct opposition to God and separation from the very life force of our existence.

May we choose a different approach to Jesus, by surrendering our wills to him this day. May we ask him to reveal the darkness that dwells within us and grant us the humility to call it out and renounce anything that is not of God. May God grant us the courage to repent and the willingness to receive the healing touch of the Holy Spirit such that we might be transformed into Jesus’ image and likeness, so to know him and our Father more. May we reject evil and choose the good, reject pride and choose love, reject death and choose life. With each person we encounter today, may we reject the temptation to withdraw or scowl and instead offer a smile, a hand of welcome, and a listening ear.

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Painting by James Tissot.

Catholic Church. “Article 8: Sin,” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012.

Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Will we follow Jesus as Levi did?

In both the first reading from Hebrews and verse from Psalm 19 we read about the power of God’s word. “The word of God is living and effective” (Hebrews 4:12) and the words of the “Lord, are spirit and life” (Psalm 19). Jesus gives face to the living word of God come down from heaven to transform his people as he continues to teach with authority and offer healing. In today’s account of Mark, Jesus calls his fifth disciple, Levi. The key difference with this call of Levi and the four fisherman is Levi’s occupational hazard.

Tax collectors were disliked, even despised by many in ancient Palestine because they were considered unclean, and categorized as with lepers and sinners. They were cast in this net because the tax collector had a responsibility to pay a fixed amount to the occupying power of Rome. This in itself was bad enough because their own countrymen were colluding with the enemy. What made matters worse was that too many kept as a commission anything he collected over and above that fixed amount. The majority of the population, already just getting by, paying a temple tax, and the Roman tax, then finding out their local tax collector was taking more than their fair share, did not make for feelings of endearment.

Jesus surprises all who had come to hear him teach when he not only invites Levi, also known as Matthew, to follow him but then they have dinner together. We are witnessing yet again another healing miracle. Jesus provides an opportunity of bridging divides by inviting someone to his inner circle, to turn away from one way of life to begin anew, to: “Repent and believe in the gospel” (cf. Mk 1:15). The Pharisees question his choice of table fellowship companions. It is not clear if the Pharisees are eating with them or are on the outside looking in. The other curious point is that the Pharisees are conversing with Jesus’ disciples. So both groups are together witnessing the communal exchange, from a distance. They choose not to engage in the fullness of the fellowship.

They could not have been at too great a distance though because Jesus could hear their concerns and responded to them: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Mk 2:17). The Pharisees, and possibly some of his disciples, were not a part of the intimacy of this communion because of their own unwillingness to accept those that Jesus invited to share a meal, to accept that they too were sinners also in need of healing.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Jesus forgives and offers mercy to all who are willing to be aware of his invitation to fellowship. In surrendering our finite freedom over to his divine freedom, we receive healing and transformation, then are offered an opportunity to develop an intimate relationship and participate in communion with the one who is ushering in the kingdom of God. This is a foreshadowing of the last supper and the celebration of the Mass.

We too are invited as sinners to join the banquet, to be in fellowship with Jesus. As Levi received, we are given an opportunity to begin again, to leave behind anything that separates us from God and one another and follow Jesus, who came that we might be forgiven and healed.

As with many Gospel passages, today’s offers a wonderful opportunity to place ourselves in the scene. Mark presents Jesus teaching the people though he again does not tell us anything about what he shared. Knowing what follows, we might think about and ask ourselves, “What might Jesus have taught before going to Levi at the custom’s post?” Could he have been talking, as Matthew adds in his parallel account, about how Amos preached that God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Mt 9:12)?

Let us read this passage slowly a few times (Mark 2:13-17) and meditate upon these words of God that are “living and effective.” Then as Jesus moves to the custom post, follow him, and the others in your imagination. What is our honest reaction to Jesus calling the tax collector, Levi? Are there sins that others commit that we find easy to forgive, others that we find hard to forgive? As the scene shifts to the breaking of the bread, do we dive in with this motley crew, stay at a distance, or walk away?

The words of the “Lord, are spirit and life.” May we not only read them, but also meditate upon and pray with them so that we may be transformed by them. May we also encounter Jesus in this passage and be willing to listen to Jesus speak to us in the silence of our hearts. This is a wonderful spiritual practice that can bring us much joy, forgiveness, healing, and deeper communion with the Divine Physician and healer of our souls. No RSVP needed, just come, open up your Bible, and join the feast!

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Painting: Caravaggio’s “The Call of St. Matthew”

Link for the Mass reading for Saturday, January 18, 2025