Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 21 July 2012
Epistle: Romans 15:1-7
Gospel: Matthew 9:27-35
The Gospel has much to teach us about healing, and through healing, about salvation. Physical healing is such a mystery. The tradition of the Church calls on us to come forward with faith for anointing when we are sick, as we read in St. James’ Epistle: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (Js. 5:14). We have special services, such as Holy Unction, for the healing of soul and body. We remember the sick and the suffering in the litanies.
Now, healing often involves both soul and body. We usually think that our physical healing involves our souls. After all, our willingness to be healed, to take our medicine, to pray, to be anointed in faith, to be at peace and trust God, is all spiritual. But people often think that the inverse isn’t true: that is, that our spiritual healing involves our bodies, temporary as they are.
In today’s Gospel, Christ God heals the blind men, who miraculously receive their sight. But Jesus doesn’t do this randomly. To paraphrase St. John Chrysostom, Christ doesn’t run after those in need of healing everywhere, lest anyone think He’s healing out of vainglory. There’s also more at work here: Christ often demands a participation, a cooperation from those who are healed. In fact, in most of the healing we see in the Gospels, those in need of healing personally seek out that healing from Christ. In other words, they desire their healing. They desire their healing enough to seek Christ out. They desire healing enough to plead with Christ God for it.
We call this desire, faith, and we see it at work in the two blind men: They seek out Jesus; they follow Jesus; they cry out to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” And if that was not enough, Jesus asks them even after such a demonstration of faith, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” And they say to Him, “Yes, Lord.” And so, He heals them.
Do you see the involvement of their souls here? Their volition, their will, was to be healed of their physical infirmity, their blindness, but it demanded great faith from them. Even still, Jesus did not heal everyone and today, not everyone receives physical healing. It remains a mystery. While our physical healing necessarily involves our will, our souls, the inverse is also true: the spiritual healing of our souls involves our bodies, our actions, our participation as well.
When it comes to healing our souls, we know that God desires this: He calls all to salvation from sin-sickness, spiritual sickness. The truth is that all of us are to one degree or another spiritually sick, or, if you will, sin-sick. We’re works in progress, who must “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” (Phil. 2:12) if we are to grow in our relationship and communion with God.
And while we can say how much physical healing is a mystery, spiritual healing is not so: Christ God gives us a sure and prescribed path toward our healing, growth, and salvation through our prayers and our continuing learning how to pray, and through the Sacraments, worship, and service—all of which He entrusts to us through His holy Church as we grow in the knowledge and love of Him, participating more and more in the life of the Holy Trinity.
Our progress in that knowledge and love of Christ is meant to be ever active, never ‘static,’ never status quo. It’s easy to fall into a rut, preferring our own opinions and ways to those of the Church. We can also fall into the trap of thinking of church as ‘duty’ before God—coming to church once in a while or even every Sunday , thinking that this is ‘good enough.’ But if our heart is not in it, if we aren’t coming outside ourselves to worship, learn, serve, and learn to love more, our sickness is perpetuated and not measurably healed.
True spiritual growth and healing in Christ begins with the self-emptying called Kenosis, which Christ Himself demonstrates as the only way we are to live in Him and heal. The foremost example of kenosis is seen in Christ’s death on our behalf on the cross, but before that in the Incarnation itself, and in Christ’s ministry to others, including His teaching and healing.
St. Theophan reminds us that when we come outside of ourselves, our self-focus, when we learn to serve the Body, we meet Christ. In other words, through our emulation of Christ, following His example, serving and building up the Body of Christ, this church and the Church as a whole, our brothers and sisters, we are serving Christ and growing in the knowledge and love of Him.
Kenosis necessarily involves humility. If we’re not humble or seeking growth in humility, we cannot serve—at least, not from the heart. If we lack humility, we cannot repent, if we cannot repent, we cannot find healing. Pride so often gets in our way, convinces us that we’re ‘good enough,’ makes us lazy, or perhaps the opposite: it convinces us that we’re a ‘lost cause.’ Either way, pride expresses the opposite sentiment that we see in the two blind men: seeking after Christ, following Him with all we have to offer, desiring Him more than anything else.
One of the foremost tools that Christ gives us through His Church for us to find healing from our spiritual sickness is found in the Sacrament of Repentance: Confession, and subsequent reception of the Eucharist. For this reason, Holy Church encourages us towards frequent confession so that we can also enjoy the benefits for our healing through frequent reception of the Eucharist, also called the “Medicine of Immortality,” because it unites us with Christ Himself and heals our souls, but only if we receive in faith, through preparation and purification.
There are a lot of misconceptions about confession; it’s not about following arbitrary ‘rules,’ like going to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned once a year—though some may fear it just as much, and it’s not just about listing our sins. To be healing for us, confession cannot be ‘pro-forma,’ something we do because we have to in order to receive the Eucharist. This is a false way to view the Sacrament and won’t avail us of the deep cleansing and healing we all need.
Rather, for our healing, we need to see confession as part of the remedy that Christ has given us through His Church so that we can seek after Christ for the healing we need from our sin-sickness, from all that is contrary to God’s way, all that holds us back from our growth in God’s love and life, His humility and self-emptying (Kenosis).
By the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Sacrament, we can learn the root causes of the sins that trip us up, that cause us and others grief or sadness, our pride and false dependence on self; we grow in confidence in our identity and self-worth in Christ, we begin to peel away the ‘onion layers’ of our souls to the heart of our struggles, what keeps us from progressing in our relationship with God and others. Confession is truly a gift from God. But this kind of soul-searching demands humility and willingness on our part for healing from God, a willingness on our part is necessary. We have to spend time in prayer, self-examination, worship, to make the most of the Sacrament and the healing and growth that God would offer us through it.
The prayers for reception of the Eucharist presuppose confession and its purification as a preparation for worthily receiving Christ’s precious and holy Body and Blood. And so through all of this, we see that our healing in soul demands something of our material bodies, our time, our energy, our worship, our prayers, our heart-felt repentance.
Our ongoing willingness to be healed, to progress in our healing, is an integral part of our salvation. We’re saved through our belief (faith) but also our actions and deeds, the living out of our faith. Faith and works go hand in hand. We cannot afford to lay aside our struggle with sin and our obedience to what Christ teaches us through His Church. We have been entrusted with the tools of our healing and salvation. Christ asks the blind men, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” We have been shown the way if we would only make use of it.
Our service to the church, to others, coming outside of ourselves, asking what we can do to build up the Church and our brothers and sisters instead of just focusing on ourselves, our wants, worshipping and helping to create an environment where others can come to worship and heal, offering our gifts, talents, and tithes, participating in the Sacramental life, demands something from us in soul and in body, but God uses this cooperation on our part to change us, to transform us, more and more into His likeness, and yes, in the process, to heal us and to save us through our growing and active communion with Him, our hungering and thirsting after more.
Because of this, our participation, our kenosis, becomes part of the working out of our salvation “With fear and trembling,” that is, not in a boastful or prideful way, but with struggle, humility, patience, and perseverance, keeping before us the prize, just as St. Paul says,
“I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Ph. 3:14). And elsewhere he says, “run in such a way that you may obtain it,” “the imperishable crown.”
My prayer for each person in this Mission is that we would continue to develop the servant heart of Christ, that we would each make use of the tools of our salvation, which Christ offers us here for our growth, healing, and salvation. And that as we grow, individually and corporately in our reflection of Christ and the Kingdom, others will find their healing and salvation in Christ as well. May we each cultivate the attitude of soul and the cooperation of body to follow Christ with all that we have, all that we are, crying out to Him, “Lord, have mercy on us!”
