His Excellency,
The Most Reverend Edward K. Braxton, Ph.D., S.T.D.
Diocese of Belleville
Sermon:
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time,
July 11, 2021,
St. Luke Parish, Belleville
“Healing the Sick”
(This is the text as originally written. During the actual delivery, some passages were omitted and other comments were added spontaneously. Nota bene: This text has not been thoroughly proofread. Therefore, there may be errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
When I was pastor of St. Catherine of Siena parish in Oak Park, Illinois, there was a 68-year-old widower, retired with adult children, who had terminal metastatic colon cancer. The doctors told his family there was absolutely no hope. But his family prayed day and night that he would be healed. After about three months the doctors could find no cancer and could not explain the remarkable recovery. About a year and a half later, there was a very similar case of a 34-year-old woman, with three young children and a disabled husband, who had terminal metastatic colon cancer. Her doctors told her family there was absolutely no hope. But her family prayed day and night that she would be healed. However, after about four months, the woman died.
These families knew each other, and many parishioners knew them as well. Some asked why was one person was healed by prayer and the other person was not, since both were faith-filled families? Some said, were not the small children and their ailing father in more need of a “cure” than the older man living in retirement? Another person said, maybe the family of the woman did not pray “hard enough.” Or perhaps God simply decided to show more mercy to the widower. Others said maybe the man was not “cured” or “healed” at all. He was just the lucky one in five million who recovered from terminal cancer. Some parishioners asked: what is the difference between the Sacrament of the Sick and faith healings? Why do we almost never hear of gravely ill people recovering after they are anointed in this sacrament and yet, we seem to hear often of gravely ill people regaining their health through “faith healing,” especially among Protestants? Does the Church teach us to hope for physical recovery from life threatening sickness when we receive the Sacrament of the Sick, or does the Church teach us that this sacrament simply helps us to face serious illness and death with inner peace and confident hope? Do Protestants have more faith in the power of God to intervene and heal the sick than Catholics do?
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This morning’s gospel prompts us to meditate on questions such as these. “Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. So, they went off and preached repentance. The Twelve anointed many who were sick with oil and cured them.”
Clearly, the gospels tell us that Jesus and the apostles cured the sick not only as a sign of who Jesus was but also as a sign to affirm the faith of the person who was healed. Is healing the sick something only from biblical times or does it happen as often as some television evangelists suggest? Perhaps you know someone who was gravely ill, who seemingly was miraculously healed. Or, maybe you prayed day and night for a sick loved one, yet, she died.
We should be aware that there is a real difference between the Sacrament of the Sick and faith healing. The main Biblical text concerning Anointing of the Sick is the letter of James 5:14–15: “Is anyone sick among you? Let him bring in the priests or elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man. And the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him.” It is important to notice that the scripture passage says the sick man shall be SAVED, not that he shall be CURED.
In the Catholic Church, the Anointing of the Sick was long called Extreme Unction, that is the last sacramental anointing a Catholic can receive after Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination. It was also called the Last Rites given to someone who was in extrimis, that is, at the point of death. The reforms of the Second Vatican Council renewed Extreme Unction as the Sacrament of the Sick for any Catholic suffering from serious illness or infirmities. One need not be in danger of death. Nor is it primarily a sacrament for anointing the bodies of those who have recently died.
Only Bishops and Priests can minister the Sacrament of the Sick, using oleum infirmorum (‘oil of the sick’), an olive oil blessed by the Bishop at the Chrism Mass during Holy Week. The sacrament is to give comfort, peace, courage, and forgiveness of sins to those who are sick and prepare them for the mystery of death, with the hope of eternal life.
These are the words the Priest prays as he anoints the sick: “Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in His love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.” Notice again the prayer says the person will be SAVED, not that he or she shall be CURED.
The grace of this sacrament spiritually unites the sick person to the passion of Christ. And while the Church prays for the physical, spiritual, and emotional health of the sick person, the sacrament is not celebrated with the expectation that physical healing and recovery will take place. Some Protestant critics say Catholics do not have sufficient faith to simply pray for a complete healing, even from fatal illnesses.
Some Protestant traditions and a growing number of Catholics focus on faith healing. There is an important distinction between the Sacrament of the Sick and faith healing. Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures, like the laying on of hands, with confidence in divine intervention leading to physical healing. Believers are confident that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by faith and prayers that summon divine presence and power. Some who engage in faith healing argue that if someone is not healed, it is due to the lack of faith on the part of the sick person or the community. There have been claims that faith healers have cured blindness, deafness, cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, body paralysis, mental illness, and more. There have even been a few claims that a faith healer has, calling on the power of Christ, actually raised the dead.
In general, the scientific community is skeptical of such healings, dismissing accounts of medically unexplainable, instantaneous healings as delusional, manipulative and pseudoscience. The American Cancer Society states that available scientific evidence does not support claims that faith healing can actually cure physical ailments. But, there are some doctors who, seeing no conflict between their scientific knowledge and their faith, affirm that such healings may be possible. Many Americans, basing their beliefs on the New Testament, are convinced that faith healing is real. According to a recent survey, more than 60 percent of Americans believe that praying to God can cure an incurable disease, even if science and medicine, with its empirical methodology, concludes this is not possible. After all, they say, nothing is impossible with God. Nevertheless, it is clear that most people realize that even the most sincere and heartfelt prayer may not lead to an automatic healing of those suffering from grave illnesses. They also realize that when a person recovers suddenly from life-threatening illness, it may not be clear if the recovery is due to an answer to prayer or due to recovery processes within the human body that are not understood by medical science.
While most Catholics do not generally associate healings with the Sacrament of the Sick and do not personally think of themselves as faith healers, Catholics do associate faith healing with prayer of intercession to particular saints, especially, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ordinarily, for someone to be canonized a saint, the Church requires two documented miracles, and these are usually spontaneous healings from what are thought to be incurable diseases.
Catholics have a particular affection for the healing power of Lourdes. In 1858, there was an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl in a grotto in Lourdes, France. Mary told Bernadette to dig a hole in the ground. Water flowed forth producing a spring with healing properties, active to this day. Numerous unexplained cures have happened since 1858. These cures have been subjected to intense medical scrutiny and were only recognized as authentic cures after approval by a commission of doctors and scientists. Skeptics, seeing the display of crutches of those who arrived at Lourdes lame and left able to walk, scoff, “Show me someone who arrived at Lourdes with his amputated leg who bathed in the waters and whose leg was instantly reattached, then I might sit up and take notice.” Nevertheless, U.S. Catholic magazine reports, “Even in this skeptical, post-modern, scientific age, many Catholics still believe miracles really are possible.” According to a Newsweek poll, three-fourths of Church-going American Catholics say they often pray for “miracles.”
I have been to Lourdes several times with the Knights of Malta. I joined them in taking the sick (the malades) by wheelchair to bathe in the waters of the grotto. While I never witnessed a miraculous physical healing, I have certainly witnessed the very moving emotional and spiritual healing of individuals who came hoping for a cure but departed, like most pilgrims to the shrine, as sick as they were when they arrived. Yet, their spirits were uplifted, and their faith renewed by the profound experience of praying with thousands of the faithful from all over the world for the healing presence of God. They are, in some way, spiritually changed. One paralyzed man, who was not cured, said to me, “I am not leaving Lourdes disappointed. Being here has helped me to learn that the world is more than we know.” Every time I have gone to Lourdes, I have been deeply moved, moved even to tears.
“Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. So they went off and preached repentance. The Twelve anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!
Praise be Jesus Christ. Both now and forever. AMEN.