Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
While it’s not November yet, based upon our first reading and Gospel, it could be fitting to set the roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing (or dressing; however you call it), cranberry sauce, and corn out on the table, because the evident theme to these readings is thanksgiving. Naaman gives thanks to God for his healing, and the Samaritan leper gives thanks to Christ for his healing. So thanksgiving is certainly part of the readings and part of the message that God is communicating through His Word.
But besides thanksgiving, there is another theme that is prevalent in both the first reading and the Gospel: healing. Healing is what led to giving thanks to God in both readings that I mentioned. Naaman had leprosy, and so did, obviously the ten lepers. What else is common? In both cases, the healing comes from God through a very ordinary means. Naaman is told to wash in the Jordan River; the ten lepers are told to go show themselves to the priests (which is how the community could be sure, according to the law of Moses, that the leprosy had been healed). There was no special drink or salve. They didn’t have to find some rare flower with healing properties, or do extraordinary feats of strength to be healed: they were all healed in ordinary ways.
We say “thank you” when someone has done something for us or given us something. This very Mass is an act of thanksgiving, united to the thanksgiving sacrifice of Christ on the cross. And this Mass not only thanks God, but also has the opportunity to heal us in very ordinary ways.
But do we seek God’s healing? If a doctor were to give us a prescription that alleviated our suffering or took care of our symptoms, we would say thank you, since we no longer have to go through pain or illness. God offers us, not only healing of body (which still sometimes miraculously happens), but especially healing of soul: healing of the wounds that afflict us from injuries we have taken from family and/or friends over the years.
But I have heard stories, and I’m sure they have happened, of people walking out of homilies, or walking out of talks that remind people how horrible abortion is. Most of the accounts I have heard have the people walking out being women. And as I thought about healing, I thought about the almost 630,000 women in the US who had abortion in 2019 (the latest US stats I could find).
I have no doubt that women who have had an abortion feel deep spiritual, emotional, and psychological pain. I have no doubt that listening to someone speak about how wrong an abortion is can be a struggle, because that person is having to relive the pain and is being confronted with truth, a truth that no one can escape: that the direct, intentional killing of a human being, no matter how developed, is a grave sin. That sin causes pain; it causes one to be wounded. And sometimes it seems easier to ignore the pain, ignore the wound, than to get treatment for it.
The good news is that Jesus came to save, He did not come to condemn. Yes, Jesus calls for conversion, for changing our lives so that we say no to evil and yes to good. But if we have evil in our past (and everyone does), Christ can heal us of that evil, and the wounds that the evil caused. We don’t have to carry those wounds with us any longer. Healing is possible, the healing that leads to thanksgiving, just like it did in the first reading and Gospel.
One woman was relating to me her story that she had procured an abortion. She felt like she had no other choice, even though she knew, in her heart, that it was wrong. But she went through with it because she felt trapped. Eventually she had a conversion, and asked God’s forgiveness for what she had done. That night, she had a dream of her unborn child, who was rejoicing in heaven, and the child told the mother that she forgave her. That mother felt such relief; her wound was healed.
To any woman here who has had an abortion: God loves you and wants you to be whole and healed. He doesn’t want you to carry around the burden of what you did. God wants to set you free from that pain and guilt. To any person here who knows someone who has gotten an abortion: remind them of God’s love for them, and that God doesn’t want them to be in pain, but to be healed and to be made whole by God’s forgiveness, available to us through the Sacrament of Penance. Do not say it with judgment, but only with the love of Christ, who calls all sinners to Himself, no matter what the sin.
Healing leads to giving thanks to God. Whatever your wounds, whatever your pain. Bring it to God and let Him heal you. Sometimes it happens in the most ordinary ways.
