5th Sunday Year B - Homily 1

Homily 1 -2006

Next Friday or Saturday the Church observes the World Day of the Sick.  This year it is being celebrated in Australia, in Adelaide, and one of the Curial Cardinal will be there.  Whatever about that, today’s Gospel presents a beautiful cameo of the ministry of Jesus: That evening after sunset they brought to him all who were sick and those who were possessed by devils... He cured many who were suffering from diseases of one kind or another, he also cast out many devils...

Widespread sickness, at least on a statistical basis, is often a factor of poverty.  Many people in Jesus time faced poverty: agriculture was changing from small family farms to big landholdings owned by absentee landlords (like today’s banks).  

The common diagnosis of possession by evil spirits was almost always a mis-diagnosis.  People had no concept of emotional or mental illness and mistakenly lumped such sufferers under the heading of possessed.

Even with the more common sicknesses, little was known about their natural causes.  Sickness was the result of someone else’s action: the evil-eye of envious neighbours, the punishing hand of God or the arbitrary behaviour of angels or devils.  To be sick was not to become the object of society’s compassion but to be labelled sinner and condemned, sometimes ostracised, or to feel powerless and fearful before the superior power of witches, angels or demons.  It meant being unable to work, to earn, to stay alive or to support a family.  (And that sometimes meant either begging or starving.)  Sickness was bad news!

Jesus didn’t just cure people, like an antibiotic might.  He related to their feelings of fear, guilt and self-worthlessness.  He related to the structural sin that kept them marginalised and poor.  His healing touch reached right to their deepest core.

Against this background it is interesting to listen to today’s first reading, from the Book of Job.  Is not life on earth nothing more than pressed service, time no better than hired drudgery? Like workers with no thought than their wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me.  Lying in bed I wonder: When will it be day? Risen I think: How slowly evening comes! Restlessly I fret till twilight falls.  My life is but a breath, my eyes will never again see joy.  It reads like a classic case of depression.

Depression is not altogether unfamiliar in our current world, and frequent enough in rural communities, sometimes leading even to suicide.  Winston Churchill suffered from depression  and called it the Black Dog.  Thank God there is a growing awareness in the community of the reality of the problem of depression, and along with that, of mental illness, too.  There was a time when the Church would refuse Catholic burial to a person who committed suicide.  Thank God we know better now, though there is still so much ignorance.  Perhaps we could do more as a parish to know more about it.

It can be a medical condition, and therefore can be controlled medically.  It can be an emotional condition that can be addressed as well.  What is going on in a person’s world may be out of their control, but the crucial issue is not what is happening but how they view it and react to it and handle it.  Here people can help each other; and professional help can be invaluable.

Many people certainly experience our present world as stressful.  Stress is a condition that can be noticed, monitored and dealt with.  One spin off of meditation can be stress-reduction.  That is the main reason why some people in fact meditate.  I see the purpose of meditation quite differently, but if it has beneficial side-effects, all the better.

The gospel today went on to say that after Jesus had been with the sick and suffering, he went off to a lonely place and prayed there.  I certainly see prayer as part of the package deal of keeping life in perspective.  In prayer we can touch into the mystery of Being, which we also know is love.  We can slowly come really to believe it.  We can surrender into mercy.  We can find true inner peace.