Orca and Healing

This amazing tulip with layered petals is named Orca. It blooms early to mid-spring, orange-tangerine with gold highlights. There were a dozen of these show stoppers in the front of the house here along the blue stone walk to the chapel.  

The display lasted about two weeks before the petals fell. The leaves then lost their green  and started to decay. A friend returned a week or so later and asked, "What's happened to your tulips; they look like they're dying?"

What's happened is a normal and necessary process called Healing. The bulbs, having worked so hard in producing these wonders, have now gone into a rest period, building up reserves and even "birth-ing" bulb-lets, all of which will survive through the winter and re-appear in April of 2019. What a great name for this process - Healing.  

The word healing might well capture the Christian imagination: Jesus the Healer. But the miracles of Jesus are about much more than simply physical healing: the blind man, the deaf man, the mute, the crippled man, the bent over woman, the fevered mother in law, the little girl dead in bed, Lazaraus in his stone-tomb. They are indeed images of our present need for healing and new life in our human condition, the healing, binding up, raising up of our families, our emotional lives, our spiritual, relational, psychological, cultural, national and ecclesial lives.

He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue  on the Sabbath day as he usually did. He stood up and read, and they handed him the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll he found the place where it is written:

The Spirit of the Lord is with me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord. (Luke 4:16-19)

O Jesus, please, your healing of our family tree,
the ancestors, the long lineage of
divorce and domestic violence,
suicide, abortion and infidelity,
sex abuse, emotional brokenness,
addiction, alcoholism, poverty,
failure, desperation and depression.

O Jesus, good news for us too in the affliction of our 
loneliness,
the wounds of younger years,
sex abuse,
willful ignorance,
naivete,
our bubble world,

O Jesus, your freeing us from our enervating
greed,
selfishness,
arrogance,
superficiality,
vanity and fear,
our collecting,
our storage bins from 
sea to shining sea.

O Jesus, liberty from the slavery of our
false worship - our idolatry,
love of money,
trusting of power,
the adulation of might,
the glorification of weapons,
the sins of nationalism and
that politics...
that radio voice which keeps us from thinking freely for ourselves.

O Jesus, healing the blindness of our
hatred, 
distractions,
lack of imagination,
sight-stealing fears, 
inattention to our interior lives,
our winking at,
our confident admiration for what is repugnant to you.

O Jesus, a year of favor for us too,
anointing us with
that essential truth,
the only truth which matters really,
the truth about ourselves
as we stand before you
with the soul-seeing Father and
the Spirit of renewing life and love.


Father Stephen P. Morris

Ancestral Healing

Then Jesus began to talk to them in parables, "A man once planted a vineyard," he said, "fenced it round, dug out the hole for the wine-press and built a watch-tower. Then he let it out to some farm-workers and went abroad. At the end of the season he sent a servant to the tenants to receive his share of the vintage. But they got hold of him, knocked him about and sent him off empty-handed. The owner tried again. He sent another servant to them, but this one they knocked on the head and generally insulted. Once again he sent them another servant, but him they murdered. He sent many others and some they beat up and some they murdered. He had one man left - his own son who was very dear to him. He sent him last of all to the tenants, saying to himself, 'They will surely respect my own son.' But they said to each other, 'This fellow is the future owner - come on, let's kill him, and the property will be ours!' So they got hold of him and murdered him, and threw his body out of the vineyard. What do you suppose the owner of the vineyard is going to do? He will come and destroy the men who were working his vineyards and will hand it over to others. Have you never read this scripture - 

The stone which the builders rejected, 

The same was made the head of the corner;

This was the Lord,

And it is marvelous in  our eyes?"

At this they longed to get their hands on him, for they knew perfectly well that he had aimed this parable at them - but they were afraid of the people. So they left him and went away. Mark 12:1-12

Jesus is up against religious leadership here and he is telling them this parable-story to let them know that he knows what they're up to. The parable begins, "A man planted a vineyard," which is to say, God gathered a people, Israel, who are uniquely his own. The story contains wonderful detail reflecting God's care:  the vineyard has a protective fence, an in-house wine-press and a watch-tower.

But God expected that in time this people would be fruitful in justice. Instead, the tenants (Israel) turned on God and abused the leaders God provided to secure them. And then the story becomes particularly sad, because the owner (God) not allowing his plan to be frustrated or utterly thwarted, sent servants - prophets - one after another to secure this fruit of justice. But prophets make people uncomfortable and are more often than not, likely to be exiled, abused, killed.

Jesus is saying to his religious listeners: "Murdering God's prophets is in your lineage." We all have a lineage. We all come from a long line of ancestors. We all have a family story that goes way back in time. Some of it we know about, other aspects are lost to time. This parable caused me to think that our own family-story needs to be healed. Some of the dis-ease or the historical wound influences how we are as family even to today. In every family-story there are accounts of:

divorce

child abuse

sex abuse

suicide

domestic violence

alcoholism

drug addiction

abandonment

depression
the bad spirit of ancestral:
hatred,
racial prejudice,
anti-semitism,
negative complaint

Victorious Christ ~ San Damiano ~ Assisi

What is there to do? I'd suggest consciously bringing it to Mass, and at the consecration and elevation of the bread and wine say, "Jesus please, your mercy, heal my family." You see, the stretch of Jesus reaches not only into the four directions, north, south, east and west, but also into time - past, present and future. We can entrust every wound to Jesus' timeless, healing, self-gift. 

Healing the Demon-Seized Boy

Raphael ~ Section of The Transfiguration

This painting is part of a much larger and well-known painting of the Transfiguration by the Renaissance artist, Raphael. The larger piece is of the Apostles, Peter, James and John, over-whelmed by Christ's brightness on the mountaintop, with Moses and Elijah in conversation. We find this little sub-scene at the bottom of the image: as Jesus and his friends descend the mountain, they meet the father of a demon-seized child, hoping for the boy's release. 

It is a very moving scene, isn't it? The dad's face is full of anxiety and anticipation as he holds up the boy who is flailing about. Is that the boy's mother, who points to her son, looking to Jesus, expectantly? Other stressed-out relatives and neighbors surround the desperate family, calling out for Jesus to help. Here is the Gospel account.

When they came back to the disciples they saw a large crowd surrounding them and lawyers arguing with them. As soon as they saw Jesus the whole crowd were overcome with awe, and they ran forward to welcome him. He asked them, 'What is this argument about?" A man in the crowd spoke up: "Master, I brought my son to you. He is possessed by a spirit which makes him speechless. Whenever it attacks him, it dashes him to the ground, and he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and goes rigid. I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they failed. Jesus answered: "What an unbelieving and perverse generation! How long shall I be with you? How long must I endure you? Bring him to me." So they brought the boy to him, and as soon as the spirit saw him it threw the boy into convulsions, and he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked his father, "How long has he been like this? "From childhood," he replied, "Often it has tried to make an end of him by throwing him into the fire or into water. But if it is at all possible for you, take pity upon us and help us." "If it is possible?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible to one who has faith." "I have faith," cried the boy's father; help me where faith falls short." Jesus saw then that the crowd was closing in upon them so he rebuked the unclean spirit, "Deaf and dumb spirit," he said, "I command you, come out of him and never go back!"After crying aloud and racking him fiercely, it came out, and the boy looked like a corpse; in fact, many said, "He is dead." But Jesus took his hand and raised him to his feet, and he stood up. Then Jesus went indoors, and his disciples asked him privately, "Why could not we cast it out?" He said, "There is no means of casting out this sort but prayer."  Mark 9:14-29

As Jesus and the disciples arrive at the bottom of the Glory-Mountain the waiting crowd surges towards Jesus. "Runs forward" the gospel tells us. And they were "overcome with awe." And they "welcome Jesus." Can you feel the excitement? It makes me wonder if Jesus is still shining as he was at the top of the mountain or was there some remnant of his white-brightness that stuns the crowd. The attractiveness of Jesus. 

The father describes what's going on with the boy: it dashes him to the ground.  Poor boy. Poor parents who have to watch their children suffer. So many children suffer around the world. while their powerless parents can only watch and weep. But interiorly, can you name a time in your own life when you felt dashed to the ground?

Then there is this conversation the father and Jesus have about believing. I think the exchange is light-hearted; Jesus isn't being stern or indignant. "If it's possible," the dad asks with great courtesy. "Sure it's possible, if we believe," Jesus says. Sounds like Angel Gabriel in the conversation with Mary at the Annunciation: Sure it's possible! 

And Jesus doesn't reprimand because the dad admits faith is sometimes challenged or in short supply. We can imagine how vulnerable the parents felt - their child so tormented for so long and with no solution in sight. Jesus understands this and gives the gift of healing.

Then, when the boy is freed but left so weakened and down, people think he's dead, Jesus lifts the boy up, taking him by the hand. This is typical of Jesus all throughout Mark's Gospel accounts. Jesus, lifting up humankind. A hint of resurrection. How tender and solicitous. 

And Mark tells us that Jesus raised the boy to his feet. Can you name that place for yourself - when you were down-for-the-count and heaven restored you - put you back together or back on your feet? It's very wonderful.

Then finally, Jesus goes indoors and speaks to the disciples privately. Some folks only attend to the Gospel in the past tense. But the wonders of Jesus are for you and me as well, and NOW. Indoors means in our own interior lives - privately and personally. We don't even have to imagine what he said to them. What matters is what Jesus says to us. Each of us. Anything come to mind?