By His Stripes We are Healed

My Dear Friends in Christ,

This week we wrap up our Lenten focus on healing as we look next week to the empty tomb and what new life in Christ looks like but let us not get too far ahead! The danger can be for us to press forward in haste and not to sit in the moment. This week - Holy Week - is the key week for walking step-by-step with Jesus and his disciples, following them closely and entering into the moment. Whenever we rush ahead, we miss the present, where God seeks to meet us. I say that while at the same time acknowledging that this weekend, both Palm and Passion Sunday, we are ushered by the Church through a collision of moments. We pass through a whole week literally in the matter of about an hour.

The healing extended in Christ is different. Typically, those who are sick seek out healing from one who is well, a physician. The doctor must know about the illness and how to cure it but does not have to have had the illness. You do not have to live it to know how to repair it. The same would be true for the psychologist, although admittedly in both cases we bring our knowledge, personal and professional, to the encounter.

In the case of Jesus Christ, our divine physician, it is by his death that we are offered life. He embraces the fullness of human experience, save sin, in order to save us from sin. Isaiah states in one of his songs about the Suffering Servant, “But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, all following our own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all.” (Isa 53:5-6; see 52:13-53:12)

Our Lord pays the price that wins for us salvation, but that price for our woundedness is paid in his own blood, by his own suffering and death. This is not healing from a distance, clinical and antiseptic, but healing from the inside out. Our assumed humanity, which the Eternal Son takes to himself, becomes the instrument by and through which our humanity is restored. And in so doing, his sufferings give meaning to ours. His passion is the way to resurrection, just as our trials (carrying our crosses) become the way through which we enter into the true life he offers.

So, this week, I pray for the patience to enter fully into the mystery Christ walks for us and offers to us: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” (Jn 10:10b-11). He keeps linking the abundant life with that same self-offering (see: Jn 12:24f). Where the head has gone, we hope to follow!

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Wilson