Healing Through Obedience

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“One of them, realizing that he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice, and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked Him.” This gospel is a great example of gratitude, gratitude which becomes adoration and worship. But there’s another lesson that I wanted to highlight today, and it’s even clearer in the first reading. So, to give a little background on the first reading, it’s speaking about Naaman, and it says he was the commander of the army of the king of Syria. He was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by Him, the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor. So, this is a very successful general commander, renowned, a person very skilled at evaluating and deciding, commanding, getting things done and winning. But now he’s also a leper, and it’s hard for us to realize today the horror at that time of leprosy. And so now he is facing an enemy that he cannot overcome. As successful as he has been, as strong as he is, as many resources as he has at his command, he cannot overcome this enemy. And have you encountered a problem that you cannot overcome? And maybe zre you experiencing now a problem that you cannot overcome? So, there’s a servant from a servant who had been captured from Israel, who tells him, and so he ends up going to the king of Israel, and the king of Israel protests that he’s not God and he can’t cure him. But Elisha, Elisha is a prophet who is a disciple, the great prophet, Elijah. So, Elisha, this man of God, this prophet hears about this, and he says, let him come now to me that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel. And so, this is another example highlighting the importance of prophets. And in this case, his role is not so much going to be –  we’ll see, we’ll see what his role is. And so Naaman came with his horses and chariots. So, he has this impressive, imposing retinue coming with him. And he halts at the door of Elisha’s house, and Elisha sent a messenger to him. Notice that for this very important man, Elisha doesn’t even go out to meet him. He just sends a messenger. He sends a messenger to him, saying, “go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” So how does Naaman react? Naaman was angry, and he went away saying, “Behold, I thought he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.” So Naaman has his idea of how this should happen. This is the way this should go. And he’s an important person, and he makes things happen. And this is the way he should have behold. I thought surely, he’s not coming saying, Lord, I want to be open to whatever you want. He’s coming where he has a very clear idea of what has to happen. I thought surely he would come out to me, and he didn’t even come out. I’m a very important person. He didn’t even come out to me, and he would stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and wave his hand over the place and cure the leaper. So he had his idea of exactly how this was supposed to happen, his idea and he’s a guy who’s used to making his ideas happen.  And so, he said he’s very angry that this did not happen the way it should happen. Then, he says, “are not the Abana and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel. Could I not wash in them and be clean? So our Syrian rivers are a lot better than your miserable little Jordan River. So, he’s so angry, it says he turned away and went off in a rage. And so, he’s about to lose the one opportunity he has to be cured, all because he is so convinced about how this should happen. “Behold, I thought,” that’s what he says, “Behold, I thought that this would happen. I thought he would surely.” So he’s sure of how what was going to happen. And so, it’s his pride, that is a terrible obstacle that’s going to prevent this from happening. So, he’s about to lose this opportunity. And so, it’s an example of the danger of imposing our criteria on how God can and should act. And that happens a lot. That’s the problem prophets often run into, that people have their idea of how God should act, who God should choose, how God should speak, and so they reject it. Like with what’s going on in Medjugorje, so many people say, “Well, God, our Blessed Mother wouldn’t give so many messages or so much repetition.” We’re always imposing. And that happened a lot in the ministry of Jesus. People say, that’s not the way. That’s not according to our ideas. Like to St Faustina, one of the nuns in the convent, one of the old nuns of St Faustina said, “God would never speak to someone like you.” God would never give these messages to someone like you. And so that’s always the problem, because God is God, and our ideas are always human ideas, and we’re always imposing our ideas on God. And you’ll notice, if you listen to the messages that Sister has been receiving, the Lord comes back over and over to that, the danger of imposing our criteria on God. And the more a person is intelligent and successful, the more dangerous that is, because the greater is the danger of pride. So, who are the ones who save him? It’s his servants. It says, “his servants came near and said to him, ‘My Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing that is some difficult thing, would you not have done it? How much, rather than when he says to you, wash and be clean.’” So these are the servants. They have a lot of experience obeying orders, probably a lot of experience obeying orders that don’t make much sense to them, maybe orders that sometimes they realize it’s not a good idea, but we have to obey. So the servants obey. So the servants have experience obeying, and they’re saying he’s not asking you anything difficult. It’s a very easy thing that you’re being asked to do. Why don’t you just do it? What’s the problem with just doing it? So, notice the servants are the ones in their humility who save him. So, “he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the Man of God.” So, notice what it’s calling the prophet here, the prophet Elisha. It’s calling him the man of God, the prophet who is a man of God, that’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful, like a beautiful description of what a prophet is, a man of God. “And his flesh was restored, like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” And so where did this power come from? The power didn’t come from the Jordan River. It didn’t come from the act of washing. It didn’t come from seven, as if seven was the magical number which would make this happen. But it came from obedience to God, it came from obeying what God said to do. So, this is a great example of the power of obedience to God. Here it’s God, as so many times in Scripture, it’s God speaking through prophets and obeying God speaking through this prophet, he is able to cooperate with God, to follow God’s will for him. So, you see that pride, that which satan has infected all of us with, was about to make him lose this opportunity. It’s a great obstacle to God’s mercy, but then by obeying God, then He receives this great gift. And so, we see that this obedience also requires humility, the humility to not follow his ideas, but to accept, to obey this command, and it also requires faith, trust. And so, as I’ve said many times, these are the three virtues that the Lord has asked our little mission to have at its core, it’s humility, faith and obedience. Humility to recognize as this leprosy was forcing Naaman to recognize that he couldn’t fix the situation, and also the humility to accept it. He didn’t know the right solution, and so he had to trust in this prophet that is speaking the word of God and obey and by doing that, God acts. Now, God could have just cured him instantly when he came to the prophet’s house, but he didn’t. He made his healing conditional on his obeying what the prophet was telling him to do. Again, it wasn’t something impossible to do. It wasn’t even something difficult to do. But the obstacle was not that it was too difficult. The obstacle was his pride and even to accept the Jordan River, which was the river of the Israelites, instead of his river of his beloved homeland. And so, all that takes humility for him to make this act of humility and trust and obey. And so, this is an opportunity for us to reflect on, how is God calling me to obey Him? And so, this was this notice that this was not just a general precept like the Lord had already given to Moses in the 10 Commandments, but this was a specific direction given to him in this particular situation. So this was a prophetic message given to one person really. Some prophetic messages are given to a group of people, or sometimes even to the whole world, like the messages of the reconquest. But this was a prophetic message given to one person for one specific situation. And so thanks to the servants, Naaman obeyed, and because of that obedience was healed. And so, there’s so many examples of this. A great example is the sacraments. This passage makes us think of baptism, in which through this simple act, this simple sacrament, which involves water being poured out, but it does something, it gives grace, not just of cleansing the body, but of cleansing the soul and infusing sanctifying Grace. And so, it’s not that that rite is something magic, but it’s the act of obeying what God has instituted. Or in the Gospel, Jesus tells the lepers, “Go show yourselves to the priest,” and which is following the instructions given in the Old Testament. And that reminds us of the sacrament that Jesus has given us, of cleansing after baptism, spiritual purification of the sacrament of reconciliation, of confession. And Jesus said to St Faustina that when a person goes to confession, the blood and water that comes forth from his heart and cleanses the soul. And so, another example of obeying God. We know that that sacrament is under attack today. People say, Why should I go confess to a priest? But it comes from the Lord Himself. It’s an act of obedience. It’s not because the priest is perfect. He’s also a sinner. He’s a human sinner, but it’s because it’s through the obedience to God. And also the very Eucharist that we’re celebrating right now. We’re celebrating because Jesus said, “Do this in memory of me.” So the sacraments are great opportunities to tap in to the power of obeying God. But I also want to mention another example, which is very, well I think the Lord wants us to call attention to, which is the role of obeying God speaking through prophetic messages, through His prophets, not just 1000’s of years ago. But it would be sad if God spoke 1000’s of years ago, but now, with His Church, He wasn’t giving this grace anymore – but He is. He continues, and in times like the times that we’re living right now, which are times of great challenges, where there’s so much confusion about what is going on, and so many people are carrying very heavy crosses because the power of evil is so intense and so deceptive. That’s one thing the Lord has highlighted, especially in the messages, is how deceptive the infiltration of evil, even into the Church, not just to the Church, for instance, into our news media and our social media and our movies and our education, our government and so many things. But worst of all, in the Church, how deceptive it is, and many of the persons who are very confident in their learning, in their knowledge and their command of a situation, the experts, just like, kind of like Naaman, they are often the most deceived, because they trust too much in their own understanding and their own experience. And so, the Lord continues to give this grace of His messages, continues to speak, and often he speaks in very humble, simple ways, through very simple messages, through very simple, humble instruments. And it’s the words are often very simple. What he’s often calling to do is very simple. But many of the people who are they might be good hearted people, but they’re the good Catholics, good hearted Catholics, but they’re still too trusting in their own understanding, and so they’re not able to listen, to hear. And so again, I think that the Lord has given us right now today, and I think that that’s one of the big challenges of this reconquest, is the call to like for Naaman to listen to God who speaking, who’s giving the – just like what Naaman was told to do. It was simple, but it did require an act of obedience, of trust, of humility, of obedience. And by doing that, there’s this great grace. And the grace was not just healing him of leprosy. There was a much greater grace that he received. He received the grace of knowing who the true God was. That’s why he says, “I will.” He asked for earth from Israel, some dirt from Israel because that he wants to carry back to his own country, because he realized that the gods of Syria were not the true gods. And so that’s a much greater grace that he is receiving, greater than physical healing, is the grace to know and worship the true God. And so, I think that this has a special meaning for the reconquest today. The Lord, because that’s exactly what this is doing, that there’s a prophet who is receiving a particular message, a particular message for a particular time, and there’s great graces that come when a person has the humility, and the faith, and the obedience to respond to that message to put it into practice. So, in conclusion, as we celebrate this Holy Eucharist, we ask, with our blessed mother’s help, she who is the great example, to have this humble, trusting spirit, to obey the Lord and to obey Him as He calls us to union with Him, to holy communion with Him in this sacrament. Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Luke 17:11-19
2 Kings 5:14-17
2 Timothy 2:8-13