Now is The Time to Heal

Read the Homily

After the Resurrection, the disciples went fishing all night and caught nothing. Jesus, as you know, is the model for healing. After Peter denied Jesus, he went fishing and caught nothing. Early in the morning, the Lord instructed them to cast on the right side of the boat and they would find something. They caught 153 very large fish. I would be very happy if I caught one very large fish, so I am assuming the disciples were ecstatic. As if that was not enough, Jesus prepared them breakfast, and they ate at the beach with their Best Friend, Who was dead and had been buried a week ago. Just when you think it doesn’t get any better than that, Jesus told Peter to feed the sheep, which is one way of saying that he is a shepherd of the church. That is when Peter was declared the Pope. Not a bad promotion. Jesus seemed to be in a very good mood, dishing out all these gifts and promotions. His generosity strikes me as odd. Why is Jesus not angry at the world? People took His hand, the one that touched and cured the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, drove a spike through it and snuffed the life out of it. Why does He not brood over His injuries, or hold a grudge against the disciples for abandoning Him in the hour of need? Why is Jesus so generous? He healed. The most important thing we will ever do as Christians is to heal. Why? Because we get banged up in life, we get hurt. Jesus promised that we would carry crosses, be persecuted, receive opposition, and suffer greatly. In order to survive all of that, we need to heal.

How did Jesus heal? John’s Gospel tells us that after He died. He returned to His Father. I can imagine Jesus at the heavenly banquet with His Father. They raise glasses and the Father offered a toast: “To my Son who just saved the world.” Jesus heals quickly because He has a strong relationship with his father.

The way we heal from our crosses and tribulations is by our relationship with Christ. Imagine you win a million dollars. You are not going to complain about a ten-dollar surcharge from the bank. Our relationship with Christ is so huge in terms of blessings that everything else becomes very small.

Paul asked the Lord three times to take away the thorn in his flesh. Of course, Jesus was not going to take it away. He told us instead to pick up the cross, not look for ways to get rid of them. Jesus, however, does give us something better: grace. Let’s review. The most important task we have is to heal from our wounds from the Cross. The only way to heal is to make those wounds very small. And you do that with a deep relationship with Christ.