Sacraments... and other "signs"

Image: The Advocate.com

This morning I celebrated Mass and the Anointing of the Sick at a nursing care facility in my parish. The liturgy was beautiful and moving. A pianist and cantor from our music ministry led us in sung prayer and some of our regular ministers to the sick were about the room helping the residents. My homily on such occasions draws from predictable themes and I confess to often preaching the same message with some of the same images. But in my homily today (sorry: no text to offer you here), I mused on the physical sufferings Jesus knew before the suffering of the last days and hours of his life.

Did the infant Jesus suffer ear infections? Was he colicky? What of the child Jesus running at play, falling and running home with a bruise or a scrape - seeking the healing hug of his mother, Mary? If Jesus worked with Joseph in the carpentry business, did he know an occasional stiff neck, a sore back or cuts from a tool that slipped in his hand? With his apostles being who they were - not to mention his enemies in the religious community - isn't it probable that Jesus suffered from headaches? Were there days when Jesus told Peter: "Let's stay in this town for a while. I'm not feeling well and a day's rest won't hurt us." And how many days does one walk in sandals on unpaved roads before sore feet get the best of you? Did Jesus suffer other 1st century ailments or illnesses the gospel failed to record?

That's physical illness. What of the emotional pain Jesus experienced in discerning his Father's will? in being so often misunderstood? in being rejected by so many? in being abandoned, left alone, by those who'd been his closest friends and associates? What of those hours in the garden on the night before he died?

We'd certainly be off the mark to think that he who suffered so much in his last 48 hours was free of any human pain for the previous 33 years! Have you ever considered Jesus dealing with the aches and pains of human life? the aches and pains of the human heart?

Jesus was no stranger to human pain and suffering and that is a grace for us to know: that he suffered as do we in body and in spirit. The laying on of hands is the reassurance that the One who did not abandon his son did, nonetheless, allow him to suffer and that the promise of healing while true is not always made good on the schedule we request.

I was preaching such a message to a room filled with older men and women whose pain is often as visible on their faces as it is in their gnarled and bent limbs, who often are alone for weeks and months - or always - abandoned by most save for the nursing staff and visitors from the faith community. In such a setting, the simple gesture of laying on hands and anointing with oil do just what sacraments do: they catch up in themselves and reveal and offer a world of healing
and hope not visible to the naked or faithless eye.

The liturgy of word, anointing and Eucharist complete, we sang a closing song. As the other ministers and I prepared to go visit the rooms of those unable to come to the common room, a staffer from the care facility stepped in, opened the Boston Herald, and did a lively, interactive reading and presentation of the astrological predictions of the day! To which the freshly anointed responded with good humor, smiles and laughter.

And such is the world in which we preach the gospel of Jesus and offer his gracious presence in the sacraments...

-ConcordPastor