miracles and healing
Homily of February 3, 2021
The family, whether it is large like in the time of Jesus with his relatives, or whether it is more restricted like that of today, is beautiful.
She is beautiful, but she is also to be converted. It is marked by a tendency to retreat, which the fault of origin imprints on our nature.
We perceive it there: the family of Jesus is not in a position to welcome him, to open up to the dimension of his being and of his mission. Our families have to live the evangelical conversion. The highest parts of human life all have to be transformed by the Gospel. Religion has to convert to the Gospel just like the family. We measure it in this text.
There is a kind of paralysis of the beneficent action of Jesus who cannot perform his miracles in his own people. A prophet despised by his relatives, the family withdrawing into itself. Failing to open up, the benevolence and benevolence of Jesus is as if withheld. With this paradox that we are told that he could not perform any miracles and that right after we are told that he only heals a few sick people.
So what does he do? Does he heal via miracles? What works miracles in the Gospel is not only healing. It is because this healing is of such a strong sign that it transforms the miraculous and those around him. There is not only healing, there is conversion, acceptance in faith of what is taking place.
We will often see in the Gospel people who ask for healings but who are closed to the miracles of Jesus. It takes this gaze of faith for the miracle to work in the whole man, healing and saving him.
In the First Reading, which I find very topical, if we remember that the events we experience, whatever the cause, human, divine or both at the same time, are often lessons. A lesson is to teach us. When we receive it, it is never very pleasant, says the epistle to the Hebrews. When we have just received a lesson, we do not experience joy but rather sadness. We don't really like receiving lessons.
But if one has recovered through the lesson, then there are fruits of peace and justice. We are tempted to complain in the face of a lesson. Then grow in us, these complaints like a plant with bitter fruits.
There is reason to fear, in the events we are experiencing today, that the complaint will prevail and that the bitter fruits will prevent the lesson addressed to us from bearing fruit. It would be deaf not to hear in the events we are going through, uncomfortable and worried for many, a profound call for a change in our human relationships, our relationships between loved ones, as well as those furthest away.
The lesson is undoubtedly difficult to hear but rather than generating only sadness, we could draw from these fruits of conversion, fruits of peace and justice. Amen.
