Christian Idea of Health

Naaman the Syrian leper came looking for healing, for some kind of Fountain of Youth, to cleanse his corrupted flesh. The prophet Elisha healed him.  And the Lord Jesus healed the ten lepers who begged for His pity. They, too, had sought the “Fountain of Youth,” a way back to the perfect health of the Garden of Eden. [Spanish]

Christ came to heal.  He wills our health. God wills our true health, the health that consists in soundness of soul, as well as soundness of body.

We modern Americans obsess about our health. We, too, seek the Fountain of Youth. We chase it desperately, frantically. We live in abject fear of old age, pain, and death.

But do we really even understand what the word “health” means? Pope St. John Paul II put it like this:  “If we consider life as a mere consumer good, we reach a sort of cult of the body and a hedonistic quest for physical fitness.”

We human beings strive, with all our intelligence and scientific skill, to combat sickness and the suffering that goes with it.  Many people dedicate their lives to healthcare.  I daresay quite a few people reading this have given their lives to the work of healthcare.

But Jesus Christ alone teaches us what health really is. Jesus Christ is Himself the source of life and the Healer of the human race. His Body and Blood are the greatest and most important of all medicines. The Blessed Sacrament of the altar is the medicine of immortality.

Let’s consider Jesus Christ’s “health.” It begins with His interior communion with the will of the Father. Jesus declared that His life comes from the Father.  So: true health begins with this fundamental fact of our existence. We receive ourselves as a gift. From God. Almighty God gives us our life. If I imagine that health = total control of myself, my body, my powers, according to my will—well, then I have actually begun to understand health in a very unhealthy way.

Now, Lord Jesus lived a wholesome life, exercised temperance and self-control, worked steadily, kept His mind elevated, cultivated good friendships, knew how to relax. Like all His Jewish contemporaries, Jesus never “went to the gym.” For good reason. The ancient Greeks invented gyms, so the ancient Jews hated them. But our Lord nonetheless did the strenuous exercise we associate with a ‘fitness regimen.’ We can reasonably estimate that He walked an average of 20-25 miles per week through the course of His pilgrim life.

So: Jesus ‘stayed fit.’ He ate right and had a ‘healthy lifestyle’ for most of His time on earth. But there’s more: the God-man ultimately embraced human pain, suffering, and death. In fact, He became man for that precise reason: to suffer and die.

When we base our concept of health on Jesus Christ, a whole new horizon opens up for us.  We perceive that bodily suffering is not the absolute evil. And bodily suffering is not meaningless or a waste. Again, Pope St. John Paul II:

In celebrating the Eucharist, Christians proclaim and share in the sacrifice of Christ, for ‘by His wounds, we have been healed.’ Christians, uniting themselves with Christ, preserve in their own sufferings a very special particle of the infinite treasure of the world’s redemption, and can share that treasure with others. Imitating Jesus has led saints and simple believers to turn their illnesses and pain into a source of purification and salvation.

Modern medical science has benefited the human race enormously. But science cannot by itself explain the fundamental reason why sickness exists. Medicine can succeed in curing particular illnesses by accurately diagnosing them.  But if the question is: Why do we human beings get sick at all? “Germs” is not the whole answer.

We get sick, and we die, because of the Fall. In the beginning, we fell away from God and lost His grace, which is our true health. We walked away from the Fountain of Youth. Doesn’t mean that any particular individual illness of any particular individual person comes as a punishment for particular sins. No. What it means is: In the beginning, God offered us, the human race, paradise and immortality. But we refused the gift, out of pride.

We disobeyed because Satan tempted us. But God knows better than Satan. The sickness and suffering that we experience because of Original Sin can involve agonizing deprivations. But, on the cross, the Lord turned all those agonizing deprivations into the doorway back to paradise.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Lord Jesus said those words to the sinner who begged for Christ’s mercy–even as they both suffered together on their crosses. “You will be with me in paradise.” The suffering Christ speaks these words to the suffering sinner.

We cannot base our idea of “health” on anything other than our hope for that paradise that Jesus promised us at that moment. The paradise of true and complete communion with God. The paradise of an everlasting Eden. Our idea of health must embrace the cross of the Christ Who suffered. Because His Cross is the only way that truly leads to the Fountain of Youth.

Repent Now

He will come with superhuman suddenness. Into the middle of earth’s hurly-burly, in which we flatter ourselves that we move speedily, with our smartphones and high-speed internet.

He will come. To settle everything, to expose every lie, to make everything right. And He will do it so suddenly that Usain Bolt won’t even have time to arch his back and set his toes at the startling line. Christ will come more quickly than your software can scan an e-mail for viruses.

Which is why we make friends with Him. The Judge. We cannot outrun Him. We cannot evade Him. And we will have no time whatsoever to bargain with Him; we will have no time to plead for mercy then, when He comes like a bolt of lightning.

We have to bargain now. We have to plead for mercy now. We have to settle the account. Now. Each day.

A couple weeks ago, we talked about Chris McCandless and his immature risk-taking. It cost him his life, and his family a lifetime of grief. Remember Jim and Jennifer Stolpa, with their newborn Clayton? Stuck in the snow in northwest Nevada for eight days because they tried to take a shortcut through the mountains during a blizzard. Their imprudent risk almost cost three lives and immeasurable family grief.

But those foolish risks of life and limb amount to nothing, compared to you or me going to bed without a clear conscience. They risked mortal life. But going to sleep unprepared for death means risking eternal life.

This is not just advice for monks and spiritual athletes. This is Christianity 101. If I cannot say that I have no fear of dying on my way home today; no fear of a meteor crashing into my house; no fear of a random deadly rattlesnake bite when I go to the basement to put my laundry in the dryer—if I am not perfectly ready for The End, then I take a risk with my immortal soul more imprudent that the bodily risk I would take if I set out to hike the Appalachian Trail in the winter wearing only flip-flops and a t-shirt.

Because: They were eating and drinking up to the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. They were buying and selling on the day when Lot left Sodom, and fire and brimstone rained from the sky and destroyed them all.

Planting and building here on earth: fine. Same with marrying and giving in marriage. Provided we can do it with souls reconciled to God and ready to meet Him, in all His stern justice, right now.

The Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God is among you. (Luke 17:21)

The Pharisees asked: When will the kingdom of God come? St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his commentary on this passage, presumes that the Pharisees were taunting Christ. They mocked the crowds who believed that Jesus would sweep into Jerusalem and take over the government. The Pharisees knew that, in fact, a cross awaited the Galilean rabbi. So they spoke of the “kingdom of God” with sarcasm.

Lord Jesus had already declared: “No one can see the kingdom of God—without being born from above.” He had said that during His conversation with… Nicodemus, recorded in John’s gospel, chapter 3. I think that John 3 contains keys that can unlock many mysteries for us, so we will study that chapter in detail during Advent, at our talks before Sunday Vespers at St. Joseph’s, beginning on Christ the King Sunday, a week from this Sunday (4:30pm).

Anyway, the Lord repeated the same idea here in Luke 17. No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above, without being born anew of the Holy Spirit. You cannot see the reign of God here or there, in this town or that country, as if God were a politician or a petty potentate. You cannot tell that God reigns by a flag flying in front of the post office or the police station.

God reigns always and everywhere, according to His transcendent, omnipotent power, which leaves everyone perfectly free. He doesn’t give parking tickets or impose taxes or draft people into military service. He simply demands total obedience and love, and leaves us free to respond.

“The Kingdom of God is among you.” “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

In the Sacred Heart of Christ, God reigns perfectly, as God wills to reign. The reign of God is the peace of Christ, the perfect obedience of Christ to the will of the Father, the all-consuming love of the Son for the Father–and for all the Father’s children.

The reign of God in the Heart of Christ is among us—in the Blessed Sacrament, and in all the works of Christ’s love which happen through the mystery of the Church. And the reign of God in the Heart of Christ is within us, too: When we believe in Him, the Holy Spirit loves with Christ’s love in our own hearts, because we are members of His one body.

Little Homiletic Prose-Poem for You

The day the Son of Man is revealed. (Luke 17:30)

He came suddenly the first time.  At least it seemed sudden to most people.

Yes, the faithful children of Abraham had awaited Him for millennia.  God laid down the sentence for Original Sin, and in the same breath He promised a Redeemer.  When Mary gave birth to Him, Jewish shepherds and foreign sages rejoiced together, relieved that the long wait had finally ended.

But most people wound-up stunned.  Which families in Nazareth had prepared themselves?  When He grew up into a uniquely luminous teacher and wonder-worker, who among His neighbors calmly accepted it?  None of them.

Was it because the Nazarenes didn’t know the ancient prophecies?  Or because they didn’t even believe in God?  No. They frequented the synagogue pretty faithfully.  The thing that left them off-guard was: they had allowed short-term distractions to overwhelm their minds.

The Son of Man came suddenly, suddenly the first time—for everyone mired in this passing world.  For everyone over-stimulated by petty gossip.  For everyone with nothing more profound to meditate on than what’s for dinner, or what’s on tv tonight?  For every small-minded tin-pot tyrant with a prickly ego and suspicious eyes: the Lord came with withering suddenness.  He arrived like a thundering flood washing over a tedious little world preoccupied with its own nonsense.

His Second Coming, therefore, will assault us in the same way.  We’ll look up from our facebook feeds and see a sight so beautiful that we’ll wilt away just gazing at it.  We will find ourselves so stunned that speaking or even texting will be impossible. Dumfounded.  Paralyzed.  Helpless. Lost.

All of us, that is, except for the faithful children of Abraham who wait patiently for the fulfillment of all the divine promises.  The strangers and sojourners on this earth, who have no taste for anything fleeting, and who long only for the supernatural caviar of heaven.

For the poor remnant of the holy nation of Israel, huddled in little anonymous shacks around the globe, the glorious Coming of the Christ will not strike like a sudden thunderclap.  Rather, it will come like a sunrise with healing rays.

True Health

Naaman the leper washed in the Jordan, and his flesh became like the flesh of a little child. Lord Jesus told the ten lepers who begged for His pity to “go, show yourselves to the priests.” As they were going, they were healed.

Christ came to heal. He wills our health. He wills our true health, the health that consists in soundness of soul, as well as soundness of body.

I think we need to seek a solid foundation for our idea of “health.” Our technocratic culture, which ostensibly offers so many helps to good health, does not really have a clear idea of what health is. Pope St. John Paul II put it like this: “If we consider life as a mere consumer good, we reach a sort of cult of the body and a hedonistic quest for physical fitness.” (World Day of the Sick, 2/11/2000)

We human beings strive, with all our intelligence and scientific skill, to combat sickness and the suffering that goes with it. Many people dedicate their lives to healthcare. I daresay quite a few of you, dear readers, have given your lives to the work of healthcare. The Church’s mission to the world includes caring for the sick. And you don’t have to be a Christian to perceive that sickness is bad and healing is good.

But Jesus Christ offers the human race the true and deep vision of what health really is. He Himself is the source of life. His Body and Blood are the greatest and most important of all medicines; the Blessed Sacrament of the altar is the medicine of immortality.

Let’s study Christ’s health. It begins with His interior communion with the will of the Father. Jesus is the source of all life, yes. But He said that His life comes from the Father. So our health begins with this fundamental fact of our existence: We receive ourselves as a gift from God. Almighty God gives us our life. If we imagine that health = total control of myself, my body, my powers, according to my will, then we have actually begun to understand health in a very unhealthy way.

Now, Lord Jesus lived a wholesome life, exercised temperance and self-control, worked steadily, kept His mind elevated, cultivated good friendships, knew how to relax. He never “went to the gym.” The ancient Greeks invented gyms, so the ancient Jews hated them. But our Lord did the strenuous exercise we associate with a ‘fitness regimen.’ We can reasonably estimate that He walked an average of 20-25 miles per week through the course of His pilgrim life.

So: Jesus ‘stayed fit’—He ate right and had a ‘healthy lifestyle’ for most of His time on earth. But the crucial thing we have to keep in mind is this: the God and source of all life also freely embraced human pain, suffering, and death. In fact, He became man to suffer and die.

When we base our concept of health on Christ, a new horizon opens up for us. We perceive that bodily suffering is not the absolute evil. And bodily suffering is not meaningless, a waste of life. Again, Pope St. John Paul II:

In celebrating the Eucharist, Christians proclaim and share in the sacrifice of Christ, for ‘by His wounds, we have been healed.’ Christians, uniting themselves with Christ, preserve in their own sufferings a very special particle of the infinite treasure of the world’s redemption, and can share that treasure with others. Imitating Jesus has led saints and simple believers to turn their illnesses and pain into a source of purification and salvation.

Modern medical science has benefited the human race enormously. But science cannot by itself give us a true concept of health, because science cannot explain the fundamental reason why sickness exists. Yes, science succeeds in curing illnesses by accurately diagnosing them. But if the question is: Why do we human beings get sick? “Germs” is not the whole answer.

We get sick, and we die, because, in the beginning, we fell away from God. That doesn’t mean that any particular illness of any particular person comes as a punishment for particular sins. What it means is: In the beginning, God offered us, the human race, paradise and immortality. But we disobeyed His simple law.

We disobeyed because Satan tempted us to pride, and we gave in. But God knows better than Satan. The sickness and suffering that we experience because of Original Sin can involve agonizing deprivations. But, on the cross, the Lord turned agonizing deprivation into the doorway back to paradise.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Lord Jesus said those words to the sinner who acknowledged the justice of his punishment, but who begged for Christ’s mercy anyway–even as they both suffered together on their crosses. “You will be with me in paradise.” These are the words the suffering Christ speaks to the suffering sinner.

We cannot base our idea of health on anything other than our hope for that paradise that Jesus promised us at that moment. The paradise of true and complete communion with our Creator, the Lord and Giver of Life. The paradise of an everlasting Eden. Our idea of health must be wide and deep enough to embrace the cross of the Christ Who suffered. Because His Cross is the only way that leads to paradise.

Shire Folk and the Omnipotent Incarnation

The apostles prayed to Christ, “Increase our faith.”  We want to share in that prayer.  “Lord, increase our faith!”

Now, what precisely is this faith that we pray that the Lord will increase?  Fundamentally, the Christian faith defies definition.  It’s something mysterious, since it involves: our finite minds somehow touching, somehow knowing the infinite God.  So that we can pray.

We express our faith in the… Creed.  We believe in God Almighty, Creator of all, Lord and Giver of life.  We believe that He made everything out of nothing.  Certainly He can move mulberry trees to the sea.

Why does earth orbit the sun–the third planet out, in this particular little solar system–with Venus our neighbor inward, and Mars one planet out?  Is it all because of physics and gravity?  Well, yes…except then you have to ask:  Why then is there a sun and an earth and a Venus and a Mars, and physics and gravity?  Is it because of the Big Bang?  Maybe.  But if there was a Big Bang, then you have to ask:  Why then was there a Big Bang?  The certain answer that faith offers:  Because God wills.

God wills that Mill Mountain stand where it stands.  God wills that the Pacific Ocean extend precisely as far as the Pacific Ocean extends.  Why is the sky blue–or gray, or whatever color it is, depending on the day?  Because God wills.  God is the Almighty One.  He can move mulberry trees wherever He wills to move them.

May God increase this faith of ours.

But let’s ask ourselves this:  Is our faith in the infinite, omnipotent God a comfort to us?  Or is it terrifying?

Maybe it’s a comfort?  God governs everything with His inexorable power.  So we can let go of our delusions of grandeur.  We can accept that, in the great sway of the divine government, we are very small.  Like little hobbits occupying an obscure corner of the cosmos, living on earth for a brief moment in the grand scheme of years.  Our little pilgrim lives will pass away as swiftly as they came.  God is big.  We are small.  God can move mulberry trees at will; we are small enough to fit under a mulberry tree.  So we can shed our Messiah complexes enjoy our dinners in peace.

But wait:  This is a little terrifying, too…  I mean: Do we matter?  We believe in the awesome infinite God, Who has laid out the heavens and the stars.  We ourselves huddle here like so many little hobbits on a little planet.  Do we matter?  Our smallness can just about overwhelm us.

Let’s go back to our original question.  What is the faith that we pray the Lord will increase in us? The holy Catholic faith.  Which believes in God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things, the visible and the invisible.  And our faith also believes in:  Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.

Do we matter?  The infinite God, Who cracks mulberry trees in half at will–  Brief digression: Anyone ever see Chris Davis of the Baltimore Orioles snap his bat in half, like a twig, after a strikeout?  Wow.  Anyway:  God Almighty, Who turns mulberry trees into mulberry splinters when He wills–He did something immeasurably more amazing.  He united our human nature with Himself.  He became incarnate.

And we have to seek precision here.  God did not ‘incarnate’ Himself in the form of some fleeting vision.  He didn’t even just send an angel.  The holy Incarnation has no ephemeral aspects.  He took our human nature to Himself in such a way that He Personally became one of these little hobbits:  semi-hairy creatures, who take up a tiny patch of territory on this little, remote planet, for a fleeting period of time, punctuated by daily dinners.

God is a man.  From the first Annunciation Day forward, He always will be a man.  And that is His most awesomely powerful act of all.  He saves us sinners and gives us eternal life.  He makes us His intimate friends, His kith and kin:  the eternal Son’s brothers and sisters, the eternal Father’s beloved children.  Which involves the kind of omnipotence that makes thunderstorms and hurricanes look like so many little splashings in a bird bath, by comparison.

After all, the universe really only appears to dwarf us human beings with its vastness.  Yes: we get tired just walking from one end of a Walmart to another.  But, in fact, one human soul extends to a greater vastness than the entire universe of stars and planets, supernovas and galaxies.  We can conceive and envision and number the stars and planets and galaxies.  The very huge universe in which we find ourselves so small  is, in fact, something of which we conceive, as we gaze at the night sky, which means that our minds are bigger than it.  Not in feet and inches.  But in total spiritual comprehension.

God did not unite Himself Personally with a supernova, or even with the entire Milky Way galaxy. He united Himself with us little goofballs right here.  To give us His eternal friendship.  That is actually more awesome than anything.  We pray that our faith in that unfathomable mystery, the mystery of the eternal Son of the eternal Father becoming man–we pray that our faith in that awesome mystery will always increase.

 

 

 

 

Pope St. Leo and Other Unprofitable Servants

When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.’ (Luke 17:10)

When you have done all that you have been commanded to do, say: Thanks for giving me something to do!

When he had finished all that he had been commanded to do, Pope St. Leo the Great said: Thank you, Lord, for sending the monophysite heretics, and the Pelagians, and Attila the Hun—to give me something to do!

That was 1,554 years ago today—when Pope St. Leo died and met the Master. 1,554 years seems like a long time ago. But for the One Who commands, a thousand years is like a passing day. The One Who commands has a vastly different concept of how long things take than we do. He works magnificent works that transcend our minds. Blow our minds, when we pause to consider.

How long does it take for God to accomplish His task? How about the entire length of the history of the world! But for Him, that’s no time at all.

Thanks for giving us something to do, Lord. As in: co-operating in the salvation of souls, building the Kingdom, participating in the fulfillment of Your plan for eternal beauty.

If we whine and grow impatient sometimes; if we take our aprons off prematurely, please forgive us. Give us a fresh start on our appointed tasks. Idling on our own just gets us in trouble anyway. Thank you for giving us something to do!

Pillar of Salt

Mount Sodom in the Holy Land, made almost entirely of rock salt

Remember the wife of Lot. (Luke 17:32)

Let’s remember. Which book of the Old Testament? Right. Genesis. Lot was whose nephew? Right. Abraham.

Abraham and Lot travelled toward the Promised Land together. Both had very large flocks, so they needed to separate. Lot chose to live on the plain south of the Dead Sea. Which cities were located in that region?

Right. Sodom and Gomorrah.

Meanwhile, Abraham pleased God by his… Faith! God visited Abraham with two angels in tow and chose Abraham as the patriarch of the holy nation, the People of God. Contrast this with: the unholy activities of the citizens of Sodom.

Abraham, being a reverent man who always knelt before the great mysteries of divine justice and the sacredness of human life, begged that the Lord would spare Sodom if only five righteous people could be found dwelling there.

But, alas, five were not to be found. To the contrary, the whole city came out to try to rape God’s angels! Yeesh.

So the fire and brimstone were coming; the sky was getting ready to rain down some serious hard justice. But, because Lot a) lived outside the city walls as a herdsman and abhorred even the idea of sodomy, and b) because he was somebody’s nephew… Right! Abraham’s—for these two reasons, Lot and his family were to be spared.

The angels literally took them all by their hands, like little children, to lead them to safety. The guardian angels made one proviso: Whatever you do, don’t… Look back!

Sure, all your familiar territory will be laid waste; sure, your acquaintances, in-laws, confreres, and tradesmen will all be lost to you forever; sure, this is all happening very suddenly.

But the Lord provides. Don’t look back. Just rush forward with all the speed you can muster to the unknown future the Lord has in store for you.

But somebody looked back… Right. Why? Do the Scriptures tell us why she looked back? Yes: Wisdom 10:7. The pillar of salt is the tomb of a soul that had no… faith.

Remember Lot’s wife. She had no faith in the unseen God. She hankered for the city where she could get the internet, watch t.v., eat, drink, and be merry with the footloose-and-fancy-free people. Therefore, she did not make it.

The people who made it, on the other hand, ran into the empty desert at full speed. Simply because God had told them that He had a home for them there, just over the horizon.

Fast

Totally in love with Nicholas David? Me, too. (Oh, the shoes! He is AWESOME!!)

—

Do not run in pursuit. (Luke 17:23)

The Lord explicitly orders us not to run hither and yon, not to agitate ourselves, not to fret and frantically fumble after the definitive revelation of the truth.

The problem is not that we can be too fast-moving for God. We do not need to slow down so that He can catch up with us. No.

The problem is that, quick-witted as we are–compared to turtles and mules and Internet Explorer 8.0—we are nonetheless slower than frozen molasses, compared to God.

As He says, He moves like lightning.

When the time comes; when it’s all said and done; when there’s no more need for investigation and fact-checking, no more opportunity for reform and renewal—when that day, that moment, that instant arrives, and the light that will never go out shines, it will come like a thunderbolt across the sky.

The speed of lightning, as we know from its frequent metaphorical invocation in common parlance, reaches an order of magnitude altogether above our capacities.

Let’s say I challenge lightning to a race. Ok. Ready. Set. Go. It’s over. You lost, human. And so it will be, if we imagine that picking up our mental speed will somehow enable us to get a jump on the final apocalypse. No way.

Before we know it, we will be eating a bowl of microwave popcorn, or painting a fencepost, or driving to Wal-Mart, and the apocalypse will envelop the entire earth like King Kong grabbling a bi-plane out of the sky.

So there can be no hasty chasing of the resolution. The Lord’s point is that it’s pointless to try that. Rather, the best course of action is simply to sit still and wait patiently in a state of perpetual readiness.

The lightning will strike from east to west. So we keep our eyes fixed on the eastern horizon. Which, as Pope Benedict has explained, means having faith. We keep our interior eyes fixed on the eastern horizon by greeting every moment with faith in the good and almighty Lord Christ.